The latest round in the ongoing legal battle between the SAG-AFTRA guild and the movie website IMDb produced a key victory for IMDb. Deadline.com reports that a judge in U.S. District Court ruled that the State of California can’t move forward to enforce a new law making it illegal for IMDbPro to publish the ages of actors.
The ruling comes after IMDb filed a federal suit earlier this year in an effort to stop enforcement of AB 1687. The measure, which was backed by SAG-AFTRA, was signed into law in September and went into effect Jan. 1.
On Wednesday, “Judge Vince Chhabria found enough to grant the injunction, saying ‘it’s difficult to imagine how AB 1687 could not violate the First Amendment’ and that the government has not shown how the bill is ‘necessary’ in achieving the goal of preventing age discrimination in Hollywood,” Deadline reports.
Chhabria added: “Accordingly, the government is enjoined from enforcing AB 1687 while this lawsuit is pending.”
Even if they won this, would they then sue Wikipedia? And then Google, because Google would find a website that had actor’s ages. This is a waste of SAG-AFTRA resources that could be better spent on numerous other projects.