Judge Kennelly overturns Sexually Explicit Video Game Law in favor of free speech
In August 2005, the Illinois State Legislature enacted the
Sexually Explicit Video Game Law (SEVGL) which required all retailers to place
a four-inch square label on all games with sexual material (covering a
significant portion of the box art), signage within five feet of game software,
signage at all information desks, as well as outlawing the sale of such games
to minors.
The SEVGL defines sexually explicit video games as:
[T]hose that the average person, applying contemporary
community standards wouAld find, with respect to minors, is designed to appeal
or pander to the prurient interest and depict or represent in a manner patently
offensive with respect to minors, an actual or simulated sexual act or sexual
contact, an actual or simulated normal or perverted sexual act or a lewd exhibition
of the genitals or post-pubescent female breast.
The Entertainment Software Association took exception to
this law and promptly sued the State of Illinois, claiming that it violated the
First Amendment.
Judge Matthew F. Kennelly ruled yesterday that the SEVGL was
unconstitutional, a decision that the State is currently appealing. Specifically,
the court concluded that the SEVGL was not narrowly tailored and that the
SEVGL’s brochure, labeling and signage provisions constituted “compelled speech”
in violation of the First Amendment.
Judge Kennelly has ordered Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to pay the legal costs of the video-game industry, which now amounts
to over $510,260. According to the Associated Press,
the State has yet to make any indication that it will pay and that Judge Kennelly
is scheduled to rule next month on whether to intervene with a deadline for
payment. Since the ruling, interest on the legal fees has added more than
$7,800 to the total.
“The end result of the governor's quixotic and politically
motivated effort is that Illinois taxpayers now owe the video game industry
over half-a-million dollars,” said Gail Markels of the Entertainment Software
Association.
During the trial, the State introduced screen shots from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Leisure Suit Larry:
Magna Cum Laude and The Guy Game:
Uncut and Uncensored. Parts of these games feature various images that the
State alleges are covered by the law, ranging from digital drawings of exposed
breasts to digital animations of sex acts.
The plaintiffs introduced the game God of War, a game which takes place in ancient Greece and roughly
tracks Homeric themes, as evidence of a benign game which was
unconstitutionally criminalized by the law. In God of War, a single scene depicts two bare-chested women in
Ancient Greece. The plaintiffs allege that the scene featuring the bare-chested
women is critical to the game as it marks the point at which the character
rejects the temptations of the physical realm to focus on his mission.
In its assessment of God
of War, the court wrote in its documents, “there is serious reason to
believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is
essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey.”
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