ncac letter to gov. christie 2013
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7/28/2019 NCAC Letter to Gov. Christie 2013
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July 8, 2013
The Honorable Chris Christie
Governor of New Jersey
PO Box 001
Trenton, NJ 08625
Re: Senate Bill 2715
Dear Governor Christie:
On June 24th the New Jersey Legislature approved Senate Bill 2715, which would
force the Department of Education to expend time and resources to collect, update
and disseminate selective scientiic information about the purported effects of
certain kinds of media and entertainment that students consume off school
property. While well-intentioned, the bill is deeply misguided, and we strongly
urge you to veto it.
The bill would compel the New Jersey Department of Education to prepare, make
available online, and physically distribute information on the allegedly negative
effects of childrens exposure to media violence. Among other things theDepartment is directed to maintain continuously updated materials, including
research and statistics on how violent behavior increases after exposure to
violent ilm, music, television, or video games, and scientiic indings that show
children who play violent video games are more likely to be involved in physical
altercations with classmates, perform poorly on academic tasks, and are unable to
relate to adults in positions of authority.
The bill poses both practical and constitutional problems. The most glaring
problem is that the bill is based on factual assumptions that the United States
Supreme Court has explicitly rejected: that exposure to media violence causes
violent behavior and that children who consume violent media become aggressiveor anti-social.
Indeed, the Supreme Court concluded that studies purporting to show a
relationship between exposure to violent media and violent or anti-social behavior
have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They
do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively. To the
extent the studies show any effect on childrens feelings of aggression, those
effects are both small and indistinguishable from effects produced by other media.
Indeed, as the Court noted, the evidence demonstrates similar effects from
watching Bugs Bunny and Road Runner cartoons. Brown v. Entmt Merchants Assn,
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7/28/2019 NCAC Letter to Gov. Christie 2013
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131 S. Ct. 2729, 2739-40 (2011). Thus, were the Department to comply with the requirements
imposed by the bill, it would actually misinform parents by failing to disclose that the facts
asserted by the state education department have actually been rejected by the countrys highest
court.
As a practical matter, the bill would place an impossible burden on state educators, by requiring
them to keep fully informed about all research about media effects, which would be a relativelyuseless undertaking unless they were also able to distinguish accurate, valid and reliable research
from research that is methodologically lawed and misleading, invalid or inaccurate. However, the
bill is plainly not concerned with disseminating accurate information: its obvious purpose is to
condemn a form of protected expression and propagate the view that it is harmful.
In this respect, the bill raises serious constitutional questions. The Supreme Court has clearly
held that violent images in art and entertainment are fully entitled to First Amendment
protection. See Brown, 131 S. Ct. at 2733; United States v. Stevens, 130 S. Ct. 1577 (2010). By
targeting constitutionally protected images of violence for oficial state condemnation, the bill
engages in a form of prohibited viewpoint discrimination, enshrining as a matter of government
policy speciic opinions and judgments, including esthetic and moral judgments about art andliterature. United States v. Playboy Entmt Group, 529 U.S. 803, 818 (2000) . However, [w]hat the
Constitution says is that these judgments are for the individual to make, not for the government
to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority. Id.
We strongly urge you to reject this lawed and constitutionally-suspect approach and instead
focus scarce state resources and attention on initiatives that are more likely to promote effective
violence-prevention strategies.
Sincerely,
Joan Bertin
Executive Director
National Coalition
Against Censorship
19 Fulton Street, Suite 407
New York, NY 10038
(212) 807-6222 xt 101
Chris Finan
President
American Booksellers
Foundation
for Free Expression
19 Fulton Street, Suite 407
New York, NY 10038
(212) 587-4025 ext. 4
Emma Llanso
Center for Democracy
and Technology
1634 I Street, NW
Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20006