Industry Balks at Louisiana Ban on Youth Buying Violent Video Games
by Natalie Harris and Jenni Parker
June 26, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A recent Louisiana law prohibiting minors from buying violent video games is facing a challenge in court. The law was in effect just one day before being contested by the Entertainment Software Association (ESA).The ESA has overturned similar state laws six times before. However, the sponsor of the anti-video game violence bill, Louisiana Representative Roy Burrell, has done his research and hopes the carefully crafted legislation will be able to withstand the legal challenges from the software industry.
Burrell's original bill, which has gone on the books as Act 441, was drafted with the assistance of Florida attorney Jack Thompson, an activist who has previously taken on the video game industry. The legislation used wording modeled after a U.S. Supreme Court decision (involving obscenity) to define violence according to community standards.
Under Act 441, sales of video games are prohibited to minors in the event that "the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the video or computer game, taken as a whole, appeals to the minor's morbid interest in violence," or that it "depicts violence in a manner patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is suitable for minors," and that the game, "taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artist, political or scientific value for minors."
The law also specifies that retailers found to be in violation will be subject to fines of "not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars or [imprisonment], with or without hard labor, for not more than one year, or both."
Burrell, a father of four, has been working with inner-city kids for years and also serves on the Criminal Justice Committee in the Louisiana House of Representatives. He points out that it is up to the courts to judge the constitutionality of the state's new video game violence law; for his part, he says he is only trying to serve the public in general and kids in particular.
"Looking at this stuff and seeing how it affects me as an adult, I could imagine how it would affect youngsters," the Louisiana lawmaker says. "And then, also researching and finding out that the military used video games to help desensitize their soldiers," Burrell adds, it occurred to him that "if they can desensitize a soldier to go and kill somebody and basically become a mercenary, then why can it not affect our children?"
Governor Kathleen Blanco signed Burrell's bill to take effect immediately, and almost as quickly as it became law, the ESA announced its intention to fight it in federal court. The group has argued that the new legislation violates First Amendment protections and that retailers already have effective measures in place to prevent the sale of video games with mature content to minors.
