Indianapolis wanted to be the first city in the United States to prevent minors from playing violent or sexually explicit video games without the consent of their parents. Instead, it ended up spending more than $700,000 in its failed attempt to save children from themselves.
The city spent $400,000 researching and defending the ordinance required public arcades to obtain proof of parental consent from minors before they could be allowed to play violent or sexually explicit video games. When the video game industry sued the city, Indianapolis city attorney Scott Chinn bragged that the group would lose and have to pay the costs of litigating the issue.
Instead, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that there was no evidence that playing violent video games leads minors to engage in violent behavior, as the city had claimed. The Appeals Court ruled the law unconstitutional saying that the attempt to shield children from violent images would be “not only quixotic, but deforming.”
The city appealed to the Supreme Court which declined to hear the case, and the district court ordered Indianapolis to pay $318,000 to cover the legal expenses of the video game industry.
Now, maybe I can hike down there and have one of these kids teach me how to beat that new-fangled Mortal Kombat game I’ve been hearing about.
Source:
Video game judgment to cost city. Maureen Groppe, The Indianapolis Star, January 4, 2002.