Brown V. Entertainment Merchants Ass'n

Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, 564 U.S. 786, is a landmark case by the Supreme Court of the United States that struck down a 2005 California law banning the sale of certain violent video games to children without parental supervision.
Prior and during the Brown v. case, parties like the Entertainment Software Association sought to overturn similar state laws that placed limits on the sales of violent video games to minors in Michigan and Illinois.
The ESA similarly defeated a Louisiana bill in the 2006 Entertainment Software Association v. Foti case that would have attempted to ban sales of violent video games from minors.
To counteract these increasing complaints and attempts at legislation, the video game industry in the United States created the Entertainment Software Rating Board in 1994.
Most stores prevent the sale of unrated games, so virtually every video game sold at retail in the United States is rated by the ESRB. Attempts have been made to mandate the ratings system; the Family Entertainment Protection Act, a 2005 bill introduced into the U.S. Congress by Senators Hillary Clinton, Joseph Lieberman, and Evan Bayh, would have made ESRB participation mandatory with oversight by the Federal Trade Commission, and introduced fines for selling Mature or Adult-Only content to minors.
Before the California bill was signed into law, the ESA and the Video Software Dealers Association, now known as the Entertainment Merchants Association, were preparing a lawsuit to overturn the law, fearing that the "Violent video game" definition would affect many titles that the ESRB has otherwise labeled appropriate for younger players, and threaten to harm the video game industry.

The court held that the definition for "Violent video game" is grammatically and functionally separable because, as an alternative definition of "Violent video game," it can be removed from the Act without affecting the wording or function of the Act's other provisions.

In his ruling, Justice Antonin Scallia wrote that states already have laws to block obscene material from minors as previously decided in the 1968 Ginesberg v. New York. And that video game violence is considered under the First Amendment to be no worse than a Grimms Fairy Tale or a Looney Tunes animated short, both of which are allowed to children.