Colorado House Bill 1334
H.B. 1334 would bar the posting or dissemination, through any electronic means, of an image of a minor committing suicide or attempting to do so.
Category: violent content
Pennsylvania House Bill 109
H.B. 109 would impose a 10 percent tax on the sale of any video game rated “Mature” or “Adults Only” by the video game industry rating system.
Pennsylvania House Bill 2705
Pennsylvania state Rep. Christopher B. Quinn, R-Media, released a memorandum on September 25, 2018 stating his intent “to introduce legislation which would assess a 10% sales tax on video games that contains violent material.”
Rhode Island Senate Bill 2156
Rhode Island S.B. 2156 would make it illegal to sell or rent a video game rated M to anyone under 17 years old or a video game rated AO to anyone under 18. It would also make it illegal to sell or rent a “sexually explicit” or “violent” video game to a minor.
Delaware House Bill 346
Delaware H.B. 346 would criminalize viewing or possessing visual depictions of animal cruelty, if the act of cruelty is illegal under Delaware or federal law and if it lacks serious scientific, journalistic or political value.
Massachusetts Senate Bill 636
Massachusetts S.B. 636 would require video game and software publishers and television programmers to post labels on content with violent themes. It also requires parents to bar minors from accessing such content.
Massachusetts House Bill 1423
Massachusetts H.B. 1423 would add a fourth prong to the existing three-prong test to determine what material is “harmful to minors” and may be banned for minors. The fourth prong would apply to content that depicted violence that is patently offensive to “prevailing standards in the adult community, so as to appeal predominantly to the morbid interest in violence of minors.”
228 Academics and Scholars Submit Open Statement to the American Psychological Association Task Force on Violent Media
Last week 228 Academics, researchers and scholars sent an open statement to the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Violent Media calling for the ongoing review of media effects research to be objective, non-ideological and data driven. The statement also challenges many of the conclusions in the 2005 APA policy statement.
New Jersey Senate Bill 2715
New Jersey S.B. 2715 would require the Department of Education to make available information on how parents’ can limit children’s exposure to electronic media with violent images or themes with specific research and statistics about media effects.
Oklahoma House Bill 2696
Oklahoma H.B. 2696 would impose a 1% excise tax on violent video games. This tax would be added on top of already existing state or local taxes imposed on general merchandise.
Connecticut Senate Bill 328
Connecticut S.B. 328 would require owners of public establishments or arcades to bar minors from using certain video games with violent imagery. The bill would also create a task force to study the effects of video games with violent content on youth behavior.
Massachusetts Senate Bill 168
Massachusetts S.B. 168 would create a commission to study video games that allow a player to simulate severe battery or killing.
Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association
In striking down a California law that banned video games with violent content, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all violent content is fully protected by the First Amendment for both adults and minors. The landmark ruling also set precedent that video games have the same First Amendment protection as other media. The 9th Circuit had previously ruled that the law’s labeling requirement is unconstitutional compelled speech and a content-based requirement.
United States v. Stevens
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1999 federal law that criminalized the creation, sale or possession of images of images of animal cruelty if the act depicted in the image is illegal either where the image was captured or where it was possessed or distributed.
American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression v. Strickland
The 6th Circuit upheld Ohio’s “harmful to minors” Internet statute after the Ohio Supreme Court narrowed it so that it does not apply to websites, listservs or public chatrooms and is limited to “personally directed” communications. In the initial part of the lawsuit, the U.S. District Court struck down a provision in the law that included depictions or descriptions of violence to the definition of “harmful to minors.”
Entertainment Software Association v. Swanson
The 8th Circuit struck down a Minnesota law that restricted the sale of rental of games rated “M” or “AO” for any content, including violence, to anyone under 17 and imposed a $25 fine on any minor purchasing or renting a restricted game.
Entertainment Software Association v. Blagojevich
The 7th Circuit upheld a U.S. District Court decision striking down an Illinois law that banned the sale or rental of video games with sexually explicit content to minors beyond what may be restricted by the Supreme Court. The District Court had previously ruled a provision in the law that banned the sale or rental of video games with violent content to minors unconstitutional, which the state did not appeal in the 7th Circuit.
Entertainment Merchants Association v. Henry
The U.S. District Court struck down an Oklahoma law that banned the sale of video games with “inappropriate violence” to minors by adding material containing “inappropriate violence” to the state’s “harmful to minors” law.
Entertainment Software Association v. Foti
The U.S. District Court struck down a Louisiana law that added video games with violent content to the definition of “harmful to minors,” as well as video games with sexual content.
Entertainment Software Association v. Granholm
The U.S. District Court ruled that a Michigan law that added video games with “ultra-violent explicit” content to the definition of “harmful to minors” was unconstitutional.
Video Software Dealers Association v. Maleng
The U.S. District Court struck down a law that prohibited the rental or sale to anyone under 17 of computer and video games containing depictions of violence against law enforcement officers.
Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County, Missouri
The 8th Circuit ruled unconstitutional a St. Louis County ordinance that made it a crime to knowingly sell, rent, make available, or permit the “free play of” video games with violent content to or by minors without the consent of a parent or guardian.
American Amusement Machine Association, et al. v. Kendrick, et al.
The 7th Circuit ruled that an Indianapolis ordinance adding “graphic violence” to the definition of “harmful to minors” is unconstitutional.
Davis-Kidd Booksellers, Inc. v. McWherter
The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled that the state’s display provision was constitutional but only for material found to be “borderline obscenity,” and that the “excessive violence” provision of the definition of “harmful to minors” was unconstitutional.
FW/PBS, Inc. v. City of Dallas
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a licensing provision for adult businesses in Dallas because it failed to provide the businesses with proper procedural protection.
