Attempts to crack down on the sale of video games to minors continue to do little more than line the pockets of gaming industry attorneys at the expense of taxpayers, with attorney's fees awards now approaching $1.5 million.

Hard on the heels of a federal appeals court decision which struck down an Illinois law targeting sexually explicit games, a trial judge last week awarded $182,349 to two law firms that won a permanent injunction against a similar Michigan statute.

"States that pass laws regulating video game sales might as well just tell voters they have a new way to throw away their tax dollars on wasteful and pointless political exercises that do nothing to improve the quality of life in the state," the president of the Entertainment Software Association said in a statement.

Over the past six years, federal courts have struck down or enjoined nine state or local laws seeking to ban video game sales to minors. Not a single law has been upheld.

“[T]here is serious reason to believe that a statute sweeps too broadly when it prohibits a game that is essentially an interactive, digital version of the Odyssey,” the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Nov. 27 in the Illinois case, Entertainment Software Assn. v. Blagojevich.

Industry attorneys were awarded a total of $510,258 in fees and costs from that case, the largest payout so far (see table below).

One firm, Jenner & Block of Washington, D.C., has particular reason to be thankful for the anti-video game laws, winning prevailing party awards in four cases. As the Nov. 30 fees order of U.S. District Judge George Caram Steeh shows, six of the firm's attorneys and five paralegals worked on the Michigan case with the attorneys charging from $275 to $585 an hour.

There could be more awards in the pipeline. An application for attorney's fees is pending before a judge in Minnesota, where a statute was enjoined in July, and judges have recently blocked enforcement of laws in Louisiana and Oklahoma.

By Matthew Heller