SALT LAKE CITY, UT – A controversial bill which modifies Utah’s obscenity statute to include violent video games as a type of “material” deemed “harmful to minors” has been voted into law by the Utah House of Representatives.Utah state representative David Hogue, who sponsored the bill, is confident it will withstand challenges in court, despite the opinions of many legal scholars and recent legal history in which similar legislation has not fared well in the courts.
“This is more than a message bill,” Hogue told Utah’s The Daily Herald last month after the bill was approved 7-2 by the House Committee. “This is a bill that identifies the effects that different media has on our children.”
Hogue retooled his bill after failing the initial House Committee vote in January; the same Committee subsequently passed Hogue’s bill a few weeks after rejecting its original language.
Should Hogue’s bill pass the Senate vote, Utah’s obscenity statute would contain a great deal of verbiage which attempts to define what level of violence in a video game is to be considered “inappropriate violence”; hallmarks of inappropriate violence, among others listed in the language of the bill, include violence which is “glamorized or gratuitous”, violence that is “used to shock or stimulate”, and “graphic violence that is not contextually relevant to the material.”
The last distinction listed would appear to leave some leeway for video games that feature “historical” violence – video games depicting World War II or the Gulf War, for instance.
The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) has already begun working on their legal challenge and, like Hogue, is confident in the eventual success of its arguments.
“This bill is not needed,” Scott Sabey of the ESA said last month. “More importantly, the bill will be challenged as unconstitutional. To plug violence into an obscenity statute won’t work.”
Hogue, however, sees a causal connection between violent video games and violent behavior on the part of young people, especially in high-profile school shooting incidents, which have drawn much media attention in recent years.
“Would these same kids have done this anyway without watching violent videos? Maybe not,” Hogue told the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Several analysts and legal scholars have said that the new law has little chance of surviving court scrutiny, noting that in past decisions, the Supreme Court itself has ruled that violence is a protected form of speech, even for minors.
