Violent Videogame Argument submitted by California

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has submitted the state's initial written argument to be heard this fall in an effort to pass a proposed law that would ban the sale of violent videogames to minors.

The proposed law, signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005, was originally thrown out by the federal court and was deemed unconstitutional. This past April, however, the Supreme Court agreed the decision.

"I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will help us give parents a valuable tool to protect children from the harmful effects of excessively violent, interactive video games," said San Francisco Senator Leland Lee, who wrote the law.

"The Supreme Court has never heard a case dealing with violent video games, and considering the precedent set by the high court, I am confident that they will uphold our law as Constitutional."

In May, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), a non-profit membership group that represents the gaming community, began collecting signatures in an effort to influence the court's decision. The group plans to submit their argument against the proposed law later this year.

The hearing isn't expected to take place until at least October.

Below is an excerpt from California's argument against the sale of violent videogames:

"California's law promotes parental authority to restrict unsupervised minors' ability to consume a narrow category of material in order to protect minors' physical and psychological welfare, as well as their ethical and moral development. California has a vital interest in supporting parental supervision over the amount of offensively violent material minors consume. The Act ensures that parents – who have primary responsibility for the well-being of minors – have an opportunity to involve themselves in deciding what level of video game violence is suitable for a particular minor."

"It is well-recognized that the societal values served by the freedom to consume expressive material do not justify recognizing a constitutional right for minors of the same magnitude as that for adults – and this should be true whether the expressive material is sexually explicit or offensively violent. Instead, while minors certainly enjoy the protection of the First Amendment, it is a more restricted right than that assured to adults, who may judge for themselves what level of sexually-explicit or violent material they should consume."

"The First Amendment has never been understood as guaranteeing minors unfettered access to offensively violent material. Such material shares the same characteristics as other forms of unprotected speech, especially sexually explicit material. Throughout history, many states have enacted laws that regulate the sale of both sexual and violent material to minors. Such restrictions reflect society's understanding that violent material can be just as harmful to the well-being of minors as sexually explicit material. This is further reflected in the fact that violence can strip constitutional protection from otherwise protected material. Sexually explicit material that would be otherwise protected for distribution to adults can be considered obscene given the violent nature of its depiction. No rational justification exists for treating violent material so vastly different than sexual material under the First Amendment when reviewing restrictions on distribution to minors."