American Amusement MacHine Association v. Teri Kendrick
2001 U.S. App. LEXIS 4371, 29 Media L. Rep. (BNA) 1577, 244 F.3d 572 (2001)
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Rule of Law:
Government regulation restricting minors' access to expressive materials depicting violence, which is a form of protected speech, must be supported by compelling evidence of a direct causal link to societal harm. Speculation or studies showing a correlation with aggressive feelings, rather than violent acts, are insufficient to justify such a content-based restriction on First Amendment rights.
Facts:
- The City of Indianapolis passed an ordinance to limit the access of unaccompanied minors to video games depicting 'graphic violence,' defined as realistic serious injury like decapitation, dismemberment, or bloodshed.
- The ordinance was based on the City's belief that playing such video games causes minors to become more aggressive and violent.
- The ordinance required operators of five or more video game machines to prevent unaccompanied minors from using these games and to physically separate them behind a partition.
- A trade association for video game manufacturers, whose members produced games like 'The House of the Dead' and 'Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3,' challenged the ordinance.
- The video games at issue featured stylized, cartoon-like violence within a fantasy or narrative context, such as fighting supernatural zombies or engaging in martial arts duels.
Procedural Posture:
- The American Amusement Machine Association and other video game manufacturers (plaintiffs) sued the City of Indianapolis in U.S. District Court.
- Plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction to prevent the enforcement of the City's ordinance, arguing it was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment.
- The district court (trial court) denied the plaintiffs' motion for a preliminary injunction.
- The plaintiffs (appellants) appealed the district court's denial of the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
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Issue:
Does a city ordinance that restricts minors' access to video games with 'graphic violence' on the grounds that they cause aggressive behavior violate the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression?
Opinions:
Majority - Posner, Circuit Judge.
Yes, the ordinance violates the First Amendment. Depictions of violence are a form of protected speech, and the City has failed to provide compelling evidence that these video games cause actual harm to minors or the public. The court distinguished the regulation of violence from the regulation of obscenity, noting that obscenity is restricted because it is offensive, whereas this ordinance purports to prevent harm. To justify infringing on children's First Amendment rights under a harm-based theory, as in Ginsberg v. New York, the government's grounds must be compelling. The social science studies provided by the City were insufficient, as they did not prove that video games cause violent acts (only aggressive feelings) or that they are more harmful than violent movies or books. The court reasoned that violence is a timeless theme in literature and culture, from The Odyssey to Grimm's fairy tales, and shielding children from it would be 'deforming' and leave them unprepared for the world. The interactive nature of video games was dismissed as a superficial distinction, as all good literature is interactive in drawing in its audience. Therefore, the ordinance curtails freedom of expression without a sufficient, non-speculative justification.
Analysis:
This decision significantly strengthened First Amendment protections for video games by rejecting the argument that depictions of violence should be treated as an unprotected category of speech similar to obscenity. It established a high evidentiary bar for legislatures seeking to regulate violent media, requiring compelling proof of a direct causal link to real-world harm, not just conjecture or weak social science. The court's reasoning, particularly its skepticism towards the 'harm' argument and its defense of children's First Amendment rights, was highly influential and foreshadowed the Supreme Court's later ruling in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n, which struck down a similar California law on comparable grounds.
