SALT LAKE CITY, UT – After passing by a large margin in the Utah House of Representatives, Representative David Hogue’s controversial violent video games bill has been shelved by the Utah State Senate, which failed to vote on the bill by the required deadline.Hogue’s bill, HB 257, which passed by a vote of 56-8 in the House just a matter of days ago, faced a deadline of midnight Wednesday for the Senate to vote on the measure. However, the Senate never moved the bill out of committee onto the floor for a full vote. The lack of vote means the bill is effectively dead, at least for this legislative session.
The news met with approval from the Entertainment Software Association, which had already begun preparations for a legal challenge.
“We are pleased that the Utah bill was not enacted at this time,” said ESA president Douglas Lowenstein. “We continue to believe that bills such as this one are both unconstitutional and unnecessary.”
Utah wasn’t alone in seeing such legislation go by the wayside this week; the Des Moines Register reports that a bill that had passed the Iowa House, HF 2104, failed to meet that state’s deadline for a vote, as well.
Both bills were problematic from a constitutionality standpoint, according to many legal experts, and were deemed unlikely to survive court scrutiny. The ESA has consistently argued that such legislation is unnecessary, since measures to prevent kids from purchasing and playing excessively violent video games already exist.
According to Lowenstein, it all comes down to parents being involved and the industry providing sufficient tools for parents to make good purchasing decisions.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with any and all of those who care about these important issues to find legal and effective ways to ensure that parents have the tools to make informed decisions about the games they buy,” Lowenstein said.
It remains to be seen whether Hogue’s bill, or HF 2104 in Iowa, resurface in future legislative sessions. With several politicians in each state joining the chorus of those expressing doubt about the constitutionality of both bills, it’s unlikely they will return with the same language, and some observers have predicted the bills will not be reintroduced at all.
