Supreme Court Strikes Video Game Sale Ban

See previous post here.

California enacted Assembly Bill 1179 (2005), Cal. Civ. Code §§1746–1746.5 which prohibited the sale of violent video games to minors.

Today the United States Supreme Court held the Act to violate the First Amendment.  The opinion can be found here.  Arstechnica describes the decision as "landmark."  I would not go that far, but an important decision.

Some people complain about the court being so split.  I think it makes for great viewpoints.  How often would we see Justice Thomas disagreeing with Justice Scalia, and coming to the same conclusion for a completely different reason than Justice Breyer?

Essentially, Justice Scalia says that violence is speech, and in order to suppress the speech, the state must identify a need, which California could not do.  Keep in mind, minors are protected from speech all the time - pornography is the prime example.  But here, there was no linkage according to the Court.

Because no linkage was present, Justice Scalia feared that the ideas expressed by speech and not its effects, may be the real reason for governmental suppression, and therefore the Act did not comply with the First Amendment.

I believe it is a good decision - the Act itself was essentially pointless.  The ban only prevented the sale of video games to minors, not playing the games.  Therefore California's logic made little sense and goes something like:  1) We cannot allow minors to have access to these violent games because it will cause them harm and make them violent; 2) we will prevent the sale or rental of violent video games to children; but 3) we will allow children to play those same games if their parents buy or rent them, or they are borrowed from a friend, or downloaded (which is happening legally more and more).  Nice try.

Delta Smelt Case Appealed to SCOTUS

The Fresno Bee reports that Pacific Legal Foundation has appealed their case on behalf of three Valley farmers to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Ninth Circuit refused the hear the appeal.

The farmers are hoping to get pumping restrictions lifted so more water can be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

The Supreme Court gets to decide the cases it wants to hear so there is no guarantee the case will actually be heard.  In fact, the odds are strongly against it.  But at least for some Valley farmers have their fingers crossed.

Lulzsec Posts First Set of Alleged Gov. Documents

When people discuss about an attack on government, they do not often think of cyber attacks.  I have a feeling that is all about to change.

The Lulzsec group has uploaded a torrent to www.thepiratebay.org containing almost 500mb of documents from various law enforcement agencies in Arizona.  Lulzsec called for all hacker groups to unite to expose corruption in government, and this is the first instance of any documents being released.  The hack was confirmed by Arizona officials.

Why is this happening?  If I had to put a finger on where this all started, it would have to begin with Sony.  In my opinion, the start of what is sure to be an interesting story, began when Sony declared war on George Hotz (aka geohot).  You may not have even heard of George unless you own a Playstation  3.

Sony had originally allowed access for people to install Linux on their PS3s.  Then without notice, and after people had purchased their PS3 and installed Linux on it, Sony pushed an update to the PS3s via the internet which disabled the ability to use Linux, even for those who had already been using it.

Geohot was smart enough to figure out how to reenable Linux on the PS3 and led to this discussion at the Chaos Communication Congress.  So what did Sony do in response?  They sued geohot.  Bad move Sony.  The suit drew a ton of negative publicity and the particular ire of "Anonymous" - an anonymous hacker group.  Anonymous took aim at Sony here, here, here, here (there are more instances).  It caused serious damage to Sony.  The first hack showed Sony could not stop the attacks and had serious weaknesses in their infrastructure, so the attacks continued.  I think other groups were emboldened, including Lulzsec.  Attacks in the past were kept private in an effort to avoid attention from law enforcement.  Now, the hacks are to create attention to the effort.

It is reported that Lulzsec attacked Arizona law enforcement because of their opposition to SB 1070 and Arizona's anti-immigrant stance.  Whatever the reason, I am sure some poor IT guy in Arizona is losing serious sleep.

Wal-Mart v. Dukes Decision

This morning, the Supreme Court issued its opinion in Wal-Mart v. Dukes (pdf), a nationwide class action lawsuit which alleges discrimination of female employees.

Although the rational is split, the Court had no problem (9-0) deciding that this case was improperly certified.  The Majority Opinion, written by Justice Scalia, held that per Federal Rule 23, in order to certify the class, the plaintiff must do more than ask broad questions of the class in order to satisfy the requirements of the Rule.

Instead, the Court must perform a rigorous analysis (as the Supreme Court has said before) and that sometimes that may require the court the explore the claims of the plaintiffs more than it normally would.  ("Frequently that “rigorous analysis” will entail some overlap with  the merits of the plaintiff ’s underlying claim.   That cannot be helped.")

I posted earlier that class action certification may come to a halt; whether that occurred I cannot say for sure.  What I can say is that our firm has at least one case ripe for decertification as a result of this opinion.

Unionization Bill Still Waiting for Gov. Brown Signature

As reported in the Fresno Bee, a bill which would allow farmworkers to vote for unionization in an absentee format has been waiting for a signature from the Governor for several days now.

Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill four times during his term.

Releasing Non-Member Addresses to Union

Tim Yeung over at PERB Blog (one of my favorites), writes that the California Supreme Court agreed to hear County of Los Angeles v. Los Angeles County Employee Relations Commission (Supreme Court Case No. S191944) which should decide whether non-union members' addresses can be withheld from a request by a union.

This issue has come up several times in my practice and we have always taken the position that privacy rights preclude disclosure.  It will be great to have authority on this issue.

Announcement

I am proud to announce that our firm successfully defended the case of People v. Duinkerken in Kings County!

I am told it is the first defense verdict involving a serious felony in Kings County in seventeen (17) years.

You can read about the case chronologically in the links below:

• Trial Begins
• Expert Testimony
• Defense Rests
• Winding down
• Acquittal

ICE Domain Seizures Challenged

As I previously posted here, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) decided it was proper toseize  domains which it believed hosted copyright-infringing material.

Ars technica is reporting that a website from Spain is fighting the cause and ICE in the Southern District of New York to regain control of their domain.

A copy of their Memorandum of Points and Authorities can be found here.

I cannot believe this can withstand a legal challenge.  I have two other domains and it would shock me if one day I could have something I paid for seized by the government without any notice whatsoever.