The Court capped its 2010-11 term Monday with the latest landmark on that path: Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, striking down in no uncertain terms a 2005 California law barring the sale of violent video games to minors. It follows decisions within the last 14 months on laws restricting depictions of animal cruelty and on virulent protests at military funerals.
No matter how vile video games can be, Justice Antonin Scalia said for a 7-2 majority, “disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression.” Scalia recited the history of children’s literature from Grimm’s Fairy Tales – “grim indeed” – to Hansel and Gretel cooking their captor, and the savage murder in Lord of the Flies. Proclaiming that minors have a “significant degree” of First Amendment protection, Justice Antonin Scalia said from the bench, “Government has no free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which they may be exposed.”
