About $2 million (reduced to $1 million via a settlement).

Taxpayers’ pending $950,000 payment of opposing attorney fees is in addition to previous payments of $286,000 and $96,000. The attorney general’s office estimates that hours spent by its staff attorneys in defending the video law tack on about $500,000.

Cumulative total: $1.8 million.

But the governator thought it was a good idea.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, governor and attorney general at the time, supported appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court despite the state’s 2009 fiscal crisis and defeats in two lower courts.

“It was an important issue to the governor,” said Andrea Hoch, Schwarzenegger’s former legal affairs secretary and now an appellate court judge. “It was something he felt strongly about.”

The tactic backfired when the high court rejected the appeal, 7-2, forcing the state to pick up the video game industry’s legal tab.

That’s $1 million per vote!