The U.S. Supreme Court's 7-2 decision to strike down a California law that banned the sale or rental of violent video games to minors was a sound one. Predictably, though, the Monday ruling caused almost equal amounts of approval and outrage. Given the issues involved, that is hardly a surprise.
The decision strongly reaffirms the court's and the nation's unswerving commitment to free speech. Monday's ruling specifically extends the First Amendment protections already accorded movies, plays, books and cable television to video games. It also implied, correctly, that there is no need to resort to the law to protect children from the mayhem that many videos contain when other viable methods of doing so are available.
The decision also scrambled the usual conservative-liberal balance of the court. From a historical prospective, that's not unusual. Free speech issues often prompt strange alliances.
The majority opinion, written by hard-core conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, was joined by Anthony Kennedy, another conservative, and liberals Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito, both conservatives, concurred with the majority but did not agree with its reasoning. Justices Clarence Thomas, a rock-ribbed conservative, and Stephen G. Breyer, who usually sides with court liberals, wrote separate dissents.
The majority's ruling was incisive. It found that California had no compelling interest to protect children from videos' imaginary violence. The majority agreed, too, that the state failed to make its case that the games were obscene by legal definition and that exposure to the violence in the games could lead to psychological harm or promote violent behavior. Indeed, Scalia pointedly wrote that while some studies do show a small correlation between violent video games and aggressive behavior in children, that's not usually the case.
Scalia's opinion noted that many fairy tales - "Snow White," "Cinderella" and "Hansel and Gretel," among them - are noticeably violent and that they are not subject to the sort of regulation that California proposed for video games. He pointedly noted, too, that one of the state's experts "admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner." If that's true, it's hard to make a case that games with similar themes should be regulated by the state.
There is another and better way to control access to violent video games. If parents don't want their kids to play them, they can easily stop the practice. All they have to do is to summon the courage to say "no" when a child a wants to buy, rent or play one of the games.