Grandma, grandpa get owned by Illinois' failed gaming law

Ars Technica reports:

In 2005, Illinois sought to make the sale of violent or sexually-explicit video games illegal, with a $5,000 fine or a year in jail for anyone selling the games to minors. Like similar attempts at legislating games, it failed, with the ESA then suing the state for the legal fees it had to pay to defend the case. The ESA won the case, and Illinois was ordered to pay over $500,000 in attorneys' fees. This dust-up continues to be a case study in just how badly attempts to pass unconstitutional legislation can go, as Illinois Auditor General William Holland is raising some questions about where the money to pay the ESA's legal bills came from. It turns out that 14 percent of the money was paid from the Public Health Department budget.


The way the legal fees were paid has been an ongoing concern. In May of 2007 we discovered that the governor raided funds throughout state government to pay for the litigation. Some of the areas money was taken from included the public health department, the state's welfare agency, and economic development department. If you had cash, you gave your funds to pay for the failed legislation, whether or not the department had anything at all to do with the law itself.

The Illinois Way.