The Supreme Court today issued a ruling on a First Amendment case that could have a direct impact on the Entertainment Merchants Association v. Schwarzenegger appeal which has been languishing in the nation’s top court.

United States v. Stevens centered on the rights of Robert Stevens to sell or traffic in media that depicted animal cruelty. Stevens was arrested under a 1999 law that attempted to forbid the depiction of cruelty against animals. SCOTUS ruled 8-1 that the government, [URL=http://www.scotusblog.com/2010/04/first-amendment-left-intact/]per the SCOTUS Blog[/URL], “lacks the power to outlaw expressions of animal cruelty, when that is done in videotapes and other commercial media.” The decision ([URL=http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf]PDF[/URL]) essentially nullifies the 199 law.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. wrote that the court “was not restricting the power of government to punish actual acts of animal cruelty,” but that “there was no similar history behind Congress’s attempt to ban video or other portrayals of acts of cruelty to living creatures.”
[URL=http://www.gamepolitics.com/2010/04/20/scotus-rules-case-could-lead-ema-v-schwarzenegger-decision]read more[/URL]

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