Earlier this year, free speech advocates, including CBLDF, won a victory with Brown v. EMA (formerly Schwarzennegger v. EMA), a Supreme Court decision that struck down a California law that violated the First Amendment and would have included violence among unprotected expression, alongside obscenity. Had the California law stood, it would have impinged upon the First Amendment rights of minors and their parents. It would have had additional repercussions, likely leading to the censorship of violence in other entertainment media, including comic books.
In a recent article for Media Law Monitor — Moral Panics, the First Amendment, and the Limits of Social Science — CBLDF General Counsel Robert Corn-Revere analyzed the Brown v. EMA decision, discussing the lack of scientific evidence that proponents for the regulation of violent speech claimed to have.
