IDSA v. St. Louis County
United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
IDSA v. St. Louis County
329 F.3d 954, 957
June 2003
On September 25, 2002, in a unanimous decision of a three judge panel, the Honorable Morris S. Arnold, of the Eight Circuit Court of Appeals, struck down the St. Louis violent video game law and found that First Amendment protects a wide array of content, including video games.
The Eighth Circuit held that if "the First Amendment is versatile enough to 'shield [the] painting of Jackson Pollack, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll,' ... we see no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories and narrative present in video games are not entitled to similar protection," and then went on to elaborate on First Amendment protections, stating that " [We] do not mean to denigrate the government's role in supporting parents, or the right of parents to control their children's exposure to graphically violent materials. We merely hold that the government cannot silence protected speech by wrapping itself in the cloak of parental authority... To accept the County's broadly-drawn interest as a compelling one would be to invite legislatures to undermine the First Amendment rights of minors willy-nilly under the guise of promoting parental authority."
Regarding the concern that games are harmful to minors because of their content, the Court found the County's evidence and, once again, studies by Craig Anderson, et al., to be unpersuasive. The opinion stated that the "conclusion that there is a strong likelihood that minors who play violent video games will suffer a deleterious effect on their psychological health is simply unsupported in the record...[T]his vague generality falls far short of a showing that video games are psychologically deleterious. The County's remaining evidence included the conclusory comments of county council members; a small number of ambiguous, inconclusive, or irrelevant (conducted on adults, not minors) studies; and the testimony of a high school principal who admittedly had no information regarding any link between violent video games and psychological harm...Where First Amendment rights are at stake, 'the Government must present more than anecdote and supposition.'"
After striking the St. Louis law as unconstitutional, the Court ordered the defendants to pay the video game industry $180,000 to cover their attorney's fees in this case.
To view this decision in its entirety please go to: http://tinyurl.com/cdb6n.
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