SUPREME COURT NOTEBOOK

States can't ban violent video sales to kids, court says By Jesse J. Holland Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- States cannot ban the sale or rental of ultraviolent video games to children, the Supreme Court ruled Monday, rejecting such limits as a violation of young people's First Amendment rights and leaving it up to parents and the multibillion-dollar gaming industry to decide what kids can buy. The high court, on a 7-2 vote, threw out California's 2005 law covering games sold or rented to those under 18, calling it an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. Writing for the majority, Justice Antonin Scalia, said, "Even where the protection of children is the object, the constitutional limits on governmental action apply." Scalia, who pointed out the violence in a number of children's fairy tales, said that while states have legitimate power to protect children from harm, "that does not include a free-floating power to restrict the ideas to which children may be exposed." Justices Stephen Breyer and Clarence Thomas dissented from the decision, with Breyer saying it makes no sense to legally block children's access to pornography yet allow them to buy or rent brutally violent video games. "What sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting the sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her?" Breyer said. Video games, said Scalia's majority opinion, fall into the same category as books, plays and movies as entertainment that "communicates ideas -- and even social messages" deserving of First Amendment free-speech protection. And non-obscene speech "cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them," he said. This decision follows the court's recent movement on First Amendment cases, with the justices throwing out attempts to ban animal cruelty videos, protests at military funerals and political speech by businesses. More than 46 million American households have at least one video-game system, with the industry bringing in at least $18 billion in 2010. The industry has set up its own rating system to warn parents which video games are appropriate for which ages, with the rating "M" placed on games that are considered to be especially violent and only for mature adults. That system is voluntary, however. California's 2005 law would have prohibited anyone under 18 from buying or renting games that give players the option of "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being." Parents would have been able to buy the games for their children, but retailers who sold directly to minors would have faced fines of up to $1,000 for each game sold. That means that children would have needed an adult to get games like "Postal 2," the first-person shooter by developer Running With Scissors that includes the ability to light unarmed bystanders on fire. It would also apply to the popular "Grand Theft Auto" games, from Rockstar Games, that allow gamers to portray carjacking, gun-toting gangsters. The California law never took effect. Lower courts have said that the law violated minors' constitutional rights, and that California lacked enough evidence to prove that violent games cause physical and psychological harm to minors. Courts in six other states, including Michigan and Illinois, reached similar conclusions, striking down similar bans. Video game makers and sellers celebrated their victory, saying Monday's decision puts them on the same legal footing as other forms of entertainment. "There now can be no argument whether video games are entitled to the same protection as books, movies, music and other expressive entertainment," said Bo Andersen, president and CEO of the Entertainment Merchants Association. But the battle may not be over. Leland Yee, a child psychologist and California state senator who wrote the video game ban, told The Associated Press Monday that he was reading the dissents in hopes of finding a way to reintroduce the law in a way that would be constitutional. "It's disappointing the court didn't understand just how violent these games are," Yee told the AP. Thomas argued in his separate dissent that the nation's founders never intended for free speech rights to "include a right to speak to minors (or a right of minors to access speech) without going through the minors' parents or guardians." And at least two justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, indicated they would be willing to reconsider their votes under certain circumstances. "I would not squelch legislative efforts to deal with what is perceived by some to be a significant and developing social problem," Alito said, suggesting that a narrower state law might be upheld. States can legally ban children from getting pornography. But Scalia said in his ruling that, unlike depictions of sexual conduct, there is no tradition in the United States of restricting children's access to depictions of violence. He noted the violence in the original depictions of many popular children's fairy tales such as Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella and Snow White. Hansel and Gretel kill their captor by baking her in an oven, Cinderella's evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by doves and the evil queen in Snow White is forced to wear red hot slippers and dance until she is dead, Scalia said. "Certainly the books we give children to read -- or read to them when they are younger -- contain no shortage of gore," he said. And there is no proof that violent video games cause harm to children, or any more harm than another other form of entertainment, he said. One doctor "admits that the same effects have been found when children watch cartoons starring Bugs Bunny or the Road Runner or when they play video games like Sonic the Hedgehog that are rated 'E' or even when they 'view a picture of a gun," Scalia said. Tim Winter, president of the Parents Television Council, said the decision created a constitutionally authorized "end-run on parental authority." "I wonder what other First Amendment right does a child have against their parents' wishes?" he said. "Does a child now have a constitutional right to bear arms if their parent doesn't want them to buy a gun? How far does this extend? It's certainly concerning to us that something as simple as requiring a parental oversight to purchase an adult product has been undermined by the court." The case is Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 08-1448. ---------- Associated Press writers Paul Elias and Derrik J. Lang contributed to this story from California. Court limits state rules on campaign spending By Mark Sherman Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court imposed new limits Monday on states trying to restrain the influence of money in politics, striking down a law that tied the amount of public funds a candidate receives to how much privately funded rivals spend. The 5-4 ruling was the latest in a series of decisions by the court's conservative majority upending campaign finance laws. But the court did not attack the validity of using public funds for campaign financing, giving a glimmer of hope to advocates of restrictions on spending in political campaigns. Instead, Chief Justice John Roberts' majority opinion dwelled on the so-called trigger mechanism in an Arizona law that provided differing levels of money to publicly funded candidates based on the spending by privately funded rivals and independent groups. The law was passed after a public corruption scandal and was intended to reward candidates who forgo raising their own campaign cash, even in the face of heavy spending by opponents with private money. Those who challenged the Arizona law said it caused them to rein in spending to prevent their political opponents from getting a fresh infusion of state money. The court said the trigger violates the First Amendment, but left in place the rest of Arizona's public financing system. "Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide-open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand," Roberts said. At least four other states, Maine, New Mexico, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have similar "trigger" provisions that affect some political races, and could be vulnerable. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky praised the decision. "The Supreme Court ruled that a state cannot use taxpayer funds to punish a successful political campaign," McConnell said. William Maurer, an attorney with the Institute for Justice representing the challengers, said the court reaffirmed its opposition to campaign spending laws that seek to level the playing field. But Justice Elena Kagan said in dissent that the law was a reasonable response to political scandal. Reading a dissent aloud for the first time since joining the court last year, Kagan said that by providing candidates with additional money, the law actually provided for more, not less, political speech. Arizonans "passed a law designed to sever political candidates' dependence on large contributors," Kagan said. "It put into effect a public financing system that attracted large numbers of candidates at a sustainable cost to the state's taxpayers." Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor signed onto Kagan's dissent. On the federal level, candidates willing to abide by various spending limits receive public campaign money financed by the $3 that individual Americans can opt to check off on their tax returns. This case follows other recent rulings striking down campaign finance laws. Among those were last year's Citizens United decision that removed most limits on election spending by corporations and organized labor, and a 2008 decision that voided the federal "millionaire's amendment" to increase contribution limits for congressional candidates facing wealthy opponents. Roberts said the outcome in the Arizona case largely followed from the decision voiding the "millionaire's amendment." A federal judge in Arizona also cited the Supreme Court decision in ruling against the Arizona Clean Elections program, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco found that the matching funds did not violate the First Amendment. The chief justice -- joined by Justices Samuel Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas -- said nothing in the court's decision should be read as an attack on public financing generally. Groups in favor of laws like Arizona's criticized the outcome, but took some solace from Roberts' rhetoric on public financing. "After the court's ruling today, one key fact is clear. Public financing remains constitutionally strong," said Michael Waldman, executive director of New York University's Brennan Center for Justice. The center represented Arizona's Clean Elections Institute at the high court. Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election Commission and adviser to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaigns, said the trigger allowed Arizona to dole out money only if private money pumped into a race exceeded certain thresholds. "At a time when every state and locality is facing budgetary pressures, the trigger was a more parsimonious approach," Potter said. Waldman said the decision would not threaten other types of public financing, including New York City's system of giving candidates extra money for bringing in small donations. But Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine law school, said the New York program could be in legal jeopardy if the impetus for it was a desire to level the playing field, which the court has said is an impermissible basis. The case is Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, 10-238. Justices rule for British, French firms in cases WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that a man who lost four fingers in a workplace accident on a metal-cutting machine cannot sue the British maker of the equipment in the state of New Jersey. The court voted 6-3 Monday that the manufacturer's connection to New Jersey is too tenuous to allow the lawsuit to be filed there. In a separate case, the court similarly ruled unanimously against the relatives of two teenagers who were killed in a bus accident in France. The court said the relatives could not sue a foreign tire maker in state court over alleged defects that led to the accident. Tobacco appeal in La. case turned down WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court will leave alone a state court order requiring tobacco companies to pay $270 million for a smoking cessation program in Louisiana. The justices on Monday turned away an appeal from cigarette makers in a long-running class-action lawsuit first filed by Louisiana smokers in May 1996. The smokers prevailed at every step in state courts, but Justice Antonin Scalia temporarily blocked payment of the money in September, citing concerns that the cigarette makers might have been deprived of their legal rights. Last week, the court ended a massive class action on behalf of up to 1.6 million women who work at Wal-Mart. That case turned on federal rules governing class actions, and by rejecting the tobacco case, the justices indicated there was no overlap between the two. High court rejects Abu Ghraib lawsuit WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected an appeal from former detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq who wanted to sue defense contractors over claims of abuse. The justices turned aside the appeal Monday from Iraqis who said they or their relatives were abused by interrogators employed by two firms, CACI International Inc. and Titan Corp. A divided federal appeals court dismissed the lawsuits. The firms provided interrogators or interpreters to assist U.S. military guards at the prison that served as the backdrop for pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers posing with detainees, some naked, being held on leashes or in painful and sexually humiliating positions. Military investigators later concluded that much of the abuse happened in late 2003 -- when CACI and Titan's interrogators were at the prison. Published: Wed, Jun 29, 2011