Latest Videogame Industry Court Victory Is in Oklahoma
The videogame industry scored another victory in its war on state officials’ efforts to outlaw rental or sale of mature games to minors. An Oklahoma City U.S. District Court judge granted a permanent injunction against enforcing Oklahoma’s law to that effect.
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Entertainment Merchants Association President Bo Andersen called Judge Robin Cauthron’s late Monday decision “a ringing affirmation of the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression.” The judge “correctly noted that there is no way for an ordinary person to determine which games were covered by the Oklahoma law and which were not,” Andersen again, adding that it is “time for lawmakers to stop targeting videogames and the retailers that sell them.”
Videogames are expression protected by the First Amendment, the judge said in her ruling, and depictions of violence can’t be regulated the same way as obscenity. The state didn’t prove that allowing minors access to violent videogames would harm anyone, Cauthron said. She ruled that the law’s specificity regarding violent videogames, excluding other depictions of violence, saps its ostensible purpose; imposing the law would burden the First Amendment rights of adults seeking to buy games and punish parents who gave such games to their kids. The law didn’t clearly describe which violent videogames would be restricted, she said.
The bill was “clearly unconstitutional and we now need to develop a public/private partnership that meets concerned parents’ needs,” said Entertainment Software Association President Michael Gallagher. State officials and policymakers “should work together with our industry to educate parents about game ratings and the parental controls available on all new videogame consoles,” he said.
The associations sued Oklahoma last year, after HB- 3004 was signed in June 2006, banning dissemination to minors of any video or computer game depicting “inappropriate violence.” That term was defined, in part, to include depictions in any of nine broad categories. Violators would risk fines of $1,000. The act was to take effect Nov. 1, 2006. But a preliminary injunction issued in October blocked it during the legal challenge.
It wasn’t clear if Oklahoma will appeal the ruling, as California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger did this month after a similar fate befell his state’s similar law (CED Sept 6 p15).