Social Media Case Tests Limits of Supreme Court’s Tech Savvy
The justices may not know much about the internet, but they have the power to change its shape and direction.
From left: Justices Neil Gorsuch, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer in 2018.
Photographer: Pete Marovich/Getty Images
As the Supreme Court considered a California law on violent video games in its 2010-11 term, clerks for Justice Stephen Breyer, then 72, set up a large-screen television in his chambers and hooked it up to a game console. Then Justice Elena Kagan came over to play Grand Theft Auto. “There we were, killing everybody left and right,” Kagan said at a 2015 event at Harvard Law School, much to the audience’s amusement.
Breyer “thought that it was all really horrible, really just disgusting and repellent,” Kagan continued. “And I was like, ‘Next round! Next round!’” Their legal conclusions eventually matched their gut reactions: Kagan voted with the seven-member majority to strike down California’s law, which banned the sale of certain violent games to minors. Breyer dissented, citing studies that linked violent games to aggressive behavior, particularly among children.