California's efforts to regulate the sales of certain PC and console games to minors has hit yet another roadblock. GamePolitics reports that the 9th Circuit Court has reaffirmed an earlier court decision that declared the law to be unconstitutional under First Amendment free speech grounds.

Championed by California state senator Leland Yee the law, which would have banned the sales of games with violent content to minors, was signed into law by California Governor (and star of a few games himself) Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005. The law was immediately suspended thanks to a lawsuit by the game industry and in 2007 a federal district court judge overturned the law. California decided to appeal the ruling, but today's 9th Circuit Court ruling kept the earlier decision intact.

Of course, California could appeal their case to the US Supreme Court and in fact Lee is asking the state's Attorney General Jerry Brown to do exactly that. However, the state government is still reeling from having to deal with a major budget crunch. It's possible that they might feel that spending even more money on a cause that is almost certain to be losing effort to not be worth it.