California's Interest in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association

Deana Ann Pollard Sacks, Texas Southern University

Abstract

The issue presented to the Court in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association is whether a California sales regulation prohibiting the sale of the most violent “morbid or deviant” video games to minors under eighteen years of age violates the minors’ rights to receive the video game “speech.” The issue, as framed, fails to identify fully all of the minors’ First Amendment interests at risk on both sides of the controversy. When viewed from a broader perspective that considers the most recent and credible scientific evidence concerning the risks that violent video games pose to minors synthesized with constitutional policies, the challenged sales regulation should be recognized as preserving minors’ First Amendment rights, not infringing them. California’s Interest in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association reviews the most recent empirical data and the researchers’ conclusions in light of the theories and policies that animate First Amendment jurisprudence and concludes that the California sales regulation should be upheld because it likely furthers minors’ First Amendment rights and related liberty interests.