Case Study: Ginsberg V. Unified School District

By chiefly drawing on legal precedence in four court cases—Brown, Governor of California, et al. v. Entertainment Merchants Association, et al. (Brown v. EMA), Ginsberg v. New York, Case v. Unified School District, and Campbell v. St-Tammany Parish School Board—, this paper endorses the claim that all books which present controversial subject matter should have an informative label on them. Controversial subject matter is stipulated as any content that may cause emotional or mental harm on well-being of persons of any age, such topics include, but are not limited to: any historical contexts that deal with cruel and inhuman social and political conditions (for example, Nazi Germany, or slavery in the United-States), homophobia and transphobia,
Summary of Findings in Relevant Court Cases This section summarizes the relevant findings in Brown v. EMA, Ginsberg v. New York, Case v. Unified School District, and Campbell v. St-Tammany Parish School Board to advance the overall thesis of this paper, developed in section three. The goal of using these four cases is to reveal that issues of labelling content material are central to the First and Fourteenth Amendment. Brown v. EMA was brought before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to appeal a 2005 California law which restricted the sale or rental of violent video games to minors (2011, No. 08-1448, Supp. 564). The SCOTUS ruled that the Act violated First Amendment rights, on the grounds that video games are similar to protected books, movies, and plays, in that they communicate thoughts through familiar literary devices and features distinctive to the medium (Ibid, as per Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia). The Court found that one, violent video games did not constitute “obscenity” (for the legal definition of obscenity see: Miller v. California (1975), 413 U.S. 15) under the First Amendment , two, the state did not have a compelling interest in preventing psychological or neurological harm to minors allegedly caused by video games, and three, even if the state developed a compelling interest, the California law was not narrowed to meet that objective
New York is decades old, but nevertheless it presents controversy surrounding issues of free speech that still resonate today (390 U.S. 62, L. Ed. 2d 195, 88 S. Ct. 1274). The State of New York prosecuted Sam Ginsberg for selling copies of the magazines “Sir” and “Mr. Annual” to a sixteen-year-old boy (Ibid). In this case, the Supreme Court upheld a New York state criminal statute (484-h) which prohibited retailers from selling content matter to minors under the age of seventeen, if the material was deemed to be “obscene” (Ibid). At the time (a few years before Miller v. California), the concern was not what counted as obscene, but rather whether the material would be considered obscene for adults (Ibid). Section 484-h of New York’s criminal statute prohibited selling to any person under the age of seventeen content that had either pictures of nudity or sexual conduct or literature containing accounts that stimulate sexual excitement as they were considered “harmful to minors” (Ibid). The court defined “harmful to minors” as what was considered to be offensive in the adult community with respect to what was suitable for minors (Ibid). The Court (led by Justice William Brennan) ruled that section 484-h did not violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments as a restriction on expression