The local St Louis law came into force in 2000. Concerned that similar laws could be adopted across the US, the Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA) challenged it as unconstitutional because it restricted freedom of speech. However, the district court judge upheld the ban.
Last April, US District Judge Stephen Limbaugh wrote:
"This Court reviewed four different video games, and found no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech. The Court finds that video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures."
Encouraged by comments made by a Connecticut judge in another case which ruled that the game Mortal Kombat was protected by the Constitution's right of free speech, the IDSA appealed.
In a decision published yesterday, the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the IDSA. Circuit Judge Morris Arnold noted that the evidence before the court included "scripts and story boards showing the storyline, character development, and dialogue of representative video games, as well as excerpts from four video games".
He continued:
"If the first amendment is versatile enough to "shield [the] painting of Jackson Pollock, music of Arnold Schoenberg, or Jabberwocky verse of Lewis Carroll [...] we see no reason why the pictures, graphic design, concept art, sounds, music, stories, and narrative present in video games are not entitled to a similar protection. The mere fact that they appear in a novel medium is of no legal consequence.
He noted that violent games contain stories, imagery, age-old themes of literature and messages, even an ideology, just as books and
movies do.
"Whether we believe the advent of violent video games adds anything of value to society is irrelevant; guided by the first amendment, we are obliged to recognize that they are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature."
The decision, published yesterday, is available as a 9-page PDF at:
www.ca8.uscourts.gov/opndir/03/06/023010P.pdf