CTA Sued By Video Games Trade Group

By Marcus Gilmer in News on Jul 23, 2009 4:20PM

The Entertainment Software Association (ESA) filed a lawsuit against the CTA yesterday alleging the transit agency was infringing upon their first amendment rights by refusing to display ads for "mature audience" video games. Michael D. Gallagher, CEO of the ESA, said in a statement:

“The CTA’s ordinance constitutes a clear violation of the constitutional rights of the entertainment software industry. Courts across the United States, including those in the CTA’s own backyard, have ruled consistently that video games are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as other forms of entertainment. The CTA appears unwilling to recognize this established fact, and has shown a remarkable ignorance of the dynamism, creativity and expressive nature of computer and video games. The ESA will not sit idly by when the creative freedoms of our industry are threatened.”

At issue is the CTA's Ordinance 008-147 which bans any advertisement that “markets or identifies a video or computer game rated “Mature 17+” (M) or “Adults Only 18+” (AO).” This isn't the first time the CTA has been sued over such an act. The agency was sued last year over its decision to pull ads for the popular Grand Theft Auto game. That lawsuit was settled and the CTA ran the ads for six weeks late last fall as part of that settlement.

But there's even more. We exchanged emails with Dan Hewitt, ESA's Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs, who pointed out, "The state of Illinois has already paid the ESA over $500,000 in attorneys fees for violating the first amendment rights of the video game industry." Hewitt mentioned ESA, et al., v. Blagojevich, et al., which challenged the Illinois Sexually Explicit Video Game Law. In November 2006, the United States Court of Appeals (Seventh Circuit) ruled in favor of the ESA, with the ruling judge saying of the law - which prohibited the sale and rental of sexually explicit and violent games to minors as well as required stores to provied labels and notifications of the video game rating system - "that the state of Illinois 'created a statute that is constitutionally overbroad' in failing to include language in the statute that the sexually explicit material taken as a whole does not have serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value, as required by the Supreme Court test."

Given the new lawsuit as well as the CTA's current ad revenue situation, maybe it's time the CTA rethink its strategy. Or at least market its own video game.