NEW YORK – The Supreme Court on Monday ruled in a 7-2 decision that California cannot ban the rental or sale of violent video games to children under the age of 18, the Associated Press reported.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal said that the high court has decided to take on the issue of broadcast indecency again for the second time in three years. In 2009, it had ruled that the FCC could battle indecency. This time, it will rule on whether FCC restrictions on broadcasters’ speech violate the First Amendment.
On the gaming front, the court on Monday sided with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Sacramento, which had decided to throw out California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors. According to the lower court, the law violated children’s’ rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments.
Retailers who violated the California law, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional, would have been fined up to $1,000 for each infraction. More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, and the industry brought in at least $18 billion in 2010, the AP said.
