Video games are officially considered protected free speech.
 

This after a 7-2 Supreme Court decision overturning a 2005 California law restricting sale of violent video  games to minors.
 

How does purchasing a video game qualify as free speech? Ashby Jones of the Wall Street Journal explains...

“It comes under expression and it comes under not only the right to speak, but the right to spend money in the way you want to, the right to vote for certain candidates if you want to, the right to receive information, which is not speaking, but receiving information. So you’re exactly right, a lot of things come under the first amendment, including the right to get violent videogames, or not.”

USA Today quotes Justice Antonin Scalia as saying...

“There is no tradition in this country of specially restricting children's access to depictions of violence. … Grimm's Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed.”

Citing concerns about the increasingly realistic violence of certain games, Justice Samuel Alito urged the court to proceed with caution when applying precedents to new technology.

"There are reasons to suspect that the experience of playing violent video games just might be very different from reading a book, listening to the radio, or watching a movie or a television show,"

The gaming industry--the defendant in this case--maintained throughout proceedings that the Law was a solution in search of a problem, according to NPR’s Nina Totenberg.


“The industry notes that it voluntarily puts ratings on each game, instructs stores not to sell mature games to minors, and that the Federal Trade Commission found 80 percent compliance — the best record in the entertainment industry.”

This marks the first ruling made on videogames by the Supreme Court. USA Today reports the law in question was adopted in 2005, but never enforced.

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Transcript by Newsy.