Shirley Marvin, founder of Missouri Project Rock, helped craft legislation that made it a crime to rent "slasher" movies to anyone under 17. Current U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, then the state's governor, signed the bill into law in 1989, but a federal judge in Kansas City later found the law unconstitutional.

The current St. Louis County trial stems from an ordinance that Democrat Jeff Wagener, a member of the county council, introduced in October 2000 even as a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that an Indianapolis council had to delay implementation of a similar law.

The Interactive Digital Software Association (IDSA), a video-game trade group, sued to strike down the St. Louis law as unconstitutional. In April, federal District Judge Stanley Limbaugh tossed the IDSA's suit aside, saying he believed that violent video games caused aggressive behavior in children.

The IDSA immediately appealed the case to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The county has until Oct. 18 to file its own briefs. The IDSA will then have two weeks to reply.