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Displaying 41 - 50 of 69
| Title |
Author |
Citation | Alternate Citation | Summary | Type |
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| LA - Ecoterrorism - Chapter 2. Miscellaneous Crimes and Offenses. | LA R.S. 14:228, 228.1 | This law is Louisiana's interference with animal research facilities or animal management facilities law. It is unlawful for any person to: intentionally release, steal, or otherwise cause the loss of any animal from an animal research facility or an animal management facility. to damage, vandalize, or steal any property from or on an animal research facility or an animal management facility to obtain access by false pretenses for the purpose of performing prohibited acts; to break and enter with the intent to destroy, alter, duplicate, or obtain unauthorized possession of records, data, materials, equipment, or animals; to enter or remain on an animal research facility or an animal management facility with the intent to commit prohibited acts; or to knowingly obtain or exert unauthorized control, by theft or deception, over records, data, material, equipment, or animals. A person violating this law shall be fined not more than $5,000 or imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than one year, or both. A companion section (228.1) prohibits the unauthorized release of any animal, bird, or aquatic species which has been lawfully confined for agriculture, science, research, commerce, public propagation, protective custody, or education. | Statute | ||
| Western Watersheds Project v. Michael | 353 F.Supp.3d 1176 (D. Wyo. 2018) | Wyoming enacted statutes that imposed civil and criminal penalties for data collection on private land or when private land was crossed to reach public land without landowner permission. The pair of statutes (one criminal and one civil) prohibited individuals from entering “open land for the purpose of collecting resource data” without permission from the owner. The criminal statute imposed penalties that were stricter than Wyoming’s general trespass provision. The Plaintiffs, who were advocacy organizations, filed suit to challenge the statutes alleging that the statutes violated the Free Speech and Petition Clauses of the First Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and that the statutes were preempted by federal law. The District Court found for the Plaintiffs on the free speech, petition, and equal protection claims, but did not feel that the Plaintiffs stated a preemption claim. Wyoming then amended the statutes and the Plaintiffs amended their complaint re-alleging free speech and equal protection claims. The district court found for the defendants on a motion to dismiss. The Plaintiffs then appealed. Both Plaintiffs and Defendants had filed cross motions for summary judgment. The Court granted the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment and denied Defendants’’ Motion for Summary Judgment. The Court ultimately found that the Wyoming statutes were facially unconstitutional and in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. The State of Wyoming was permanently enjoined from enforcing the statutes. | Case | ||
| Huntingdon Life Sciences, Inc. v. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty | 71 A.D.3d 734 (N.Y.A.D. 2 Dept.,2010) | 2010 WL 818490 (N.Y.A.D. 2 Dept.); 896 N.Y.S.2d 440 |
Animal rights protestors appealed the decision of the Supreme Court, Westchester County that permanently enjoined the protestors from engaging in protest activity that constituted a private nuisance (to wit, participating in targeted protest at the home of the plaintiff Mark L. Bibi). This court found that the protestors failed to refute the evidence from the lower court that showed the plaintiffs were entitled to a permanent injunction as a matter of law (including evidence of the appellant's federal conviction conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Protection Act of 1992). While the court did find that the appellant-protestor's incarceration did not render the appeal academic, imposition of the injunction was a reasonable and constitutional restriction on protest activity. |
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| Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Otter | 44 F. Supp. 3d 1009 (D. Idaho 2014) | 2014 WL 4388158 (D. Idaho, 2014) | In a ‘hold your tongue and challenge now’ First Amendment challenge to an Idaho statute that criminalizes undercover investigations and videography at “agricultural production facilities,” the Animal Legal Defense Fund, as well as various other organizations and individuals, (collectively, “ALDF”), brought suit. The State defendants, Governor Butch Otter and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, moved to dismiss the ALDF's claims. The claims against the Governor were dismissed under 11th Amendment immunity because the ALDF failed to explain the requisite connection between the Governor and enforcement of section 18–7024. The court also found that since the ALDF failed to allege a concrete plan to violate subsection (e), it lacked standing to challenge section 18–7042(1)(e) and the claim in regards to that provision was therefore dismissed. However, the ALDF’s First Amendment, bare animus Equal Protection, and preemption claims survived the motion to dismiss. | Case | |
| MO - Ecoterrorism - Chapter 578. Miscellaneous Offenses. Animal Research and Production Facilities | V. A. M. S. 578.405 - 578.412 | MO ST 578.405 - 578.412 | This chapter comprises "The Animal Research and Production Facilities Protection Act." The act prohibits anyone from releasing, stealing, or otherwise intentionally causing the death, injury, or loss of any animal at or from an animal facility. It also prohibits any person from damaging, vandalizing, or stealing any property in or on an animal facility, or obtaining access to an animal facility by false pretenses for the purpose of performing acts not authorized by the facility. Generally, violation is a misdemeanor if the loss is less than $300 and a felony if it exceeds that amount. Any person who has been damaged by a violation of section 578.407 may recover all actual and consequential damages, punitive damages, and court costs, including reasonable attorneys' fees, from the person causing such damage. | Statute | |
| Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Vaught | 8 F.4th 714 (8th Cir. 2021) | Several animal advocacy organizations filed a complaint against the Vaughts and Peco Foods, Inc. seeking an order that would prevent defendants from bringing a civil suit under Ark. Code Ann. § 16-118-113 (colloquially known as Arkansas' "ag gag" law). The statute at issue provides a civil cause of action for unauthorized access to protected properties described under the law. Plaintiffs claim that the statute violates their right to free speech under the First Amendment by chilling them from engaging in activities protected under the First Amendment. In particular, the plaintiffs have "specific and definite plans" to investigate the defendants' chicken slaughterhouses and pig farms by sending undercover investigators to seek employment with defendants and collect information in an effort to support their mission to "reform[] animal agriculture." The district court found that plaintiffs failed to establish Article III standing to sue, finding that the injury at hand was too speculative. On appeal here, the court noted found that plaintiffs established the three primary elements of standing from the Lujan case ("(1) an injury in fact, (2) a causal relationship between the injury and the challenged conduct, and (3) that a favorable decision will likely redress the injury."). First, but for the statute, plaintiffs allege that they would engage in the protected constitutional conduct. Second, the plaintiffs adequately outlined their intention to engage in a course of conduct that is proscribed by the statute. Finally, the court found a credible threat of enforcement that was objectively reasonable. This is bolstered by the fact plaintiffs have successfully engaged in the conduct at other facilities in the past. While defendants contend that there is no credible threat that they would enforce the statute because these organizations would not find entry to their facilities worthwhile. However, plaintiffs presented allegations that indeed they would be interested in documenting the plaintiffs' operations because of the conditions of pigs in "nearly immovable quarters" and the use of controversial methods of slaughter. The court was equally unpersuaded by defendants' claims that there is no injury in fact since plaintiffs are not poised to publish any information gathered from their facilities. Additionally, plaintiffs sent letters to defendants asking them to waive their rights to sue and neither defendant responded. Thus, the complaint sufficiently established a case or controversy. The lower court judgment was reversed and the case was remanded. | Case | ||
| Gregg and Linda Schumacher, and Gregg Schumacher Furs, LLC dba as Schumacher Furs and Outerwear, Plaintiffs v. City of Portland, | In this Opinion, the judge granted the defendants a total of $96,870.85 in attorneys fees. The action stemmed from a lawsuit filed by the Schumachers for $ 6.6 million dollars against the City of Portland and the named defendants seeking damages for alleged illegal protest activities in front of their fur store. The defendants all prevailed on their Motion to Strike. The court observed that awarding of attorney fees is mandatory under Oregon law when a party prevails in an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) lawsuit. Thus, the issue at hand was the amount of the attorney fees. The court went through the factors under Oregon law in analyzing the reasonableness of the requested attorney fees. When examining each factor, the court determined that the evidence either was in favor of defendants or was neutral. Notably, the court found that the plaintiffs' claims against defendants were not objectively reasonable because the plaintiffs did not produce any evidence that the prevailing defendants did anything illegal. | Pleading | |||
| Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Otter | Not Reported in F.Supp.3d, 2015 WL 4623943 (D. Idaho Aug. 3, 2015) | The Animal Legal Defense Fund, and various other organizations and individuals, challenge Idaho Code § 18–7042 as unconstitutional. Section 18-7042 criminalizes undercover investigations of agricultural production facilities. ALDF alleges that § 18–7042 has both the purpose and effect of stifling public debate about modern agriculture and raises two substantive constitutional challenges against the State: (1) violation of the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment; and (2) violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court first found that § 18–7042 is both content and viewpoint based, and thus, must survive the highest level of scrutiny. The Court held that the law does not survive strict scrutiny because it "would contravene strong First Amendment values to say the State has a compelling interest in affording these heavily regulated facilities extra protection from public scrutiny." Even if the interests in property and privacy of these industries is compelling, the law is not narrowly tailored as it restricts more speech than necessary and poses a "particularly serious threat to whistleblowers' free speech rights." Finally, the Court found that the law also violated the Equal Protection clause because the law was spurred by an improper animus toward animal welfare groups, furthers no legitimate or rational purpose, and classifies activities protected by the First Amendment based on content. ALDF's motion for summary judgment was granted. | Case | ||
| Proposed Fundraising Bills in Oklahoma and Missouri Would Unconstitutionally Target Animal Rights Charities | Daina Bray, Samantha Hasey & Candace Hensley | 67 Syracuse L. Rev. 217 (2017) | Two proposed state bills out of Oklahoma and Missouri would prohibit an “animal rights charitable organization” from soliciting contributions in-state intended for either out-of-state use or “political purposes.” It is worthwhile to examine the bills and the factual context out of which they arose because of the important constitutional rights that they implicate and the potential chilling effect of this sort of legislation on the ability of nonprofits to advocate for their causes. While today it is “animal rights” groups under attack—by way of the bills discussed herein and other legislation such as so-called “ag-gag” bills, which suffer from some of the same constitutional deficiencies—it is not difficult to imagine scenarios in which other nonprofit groups with a viewpoint unwelcome to a legislature, or to powerful private interests, could be similarly targeted. | Article | |
| Privatizing the Patriot Act: The Criminalization of Environmental and Animal Protectionists as Terrorists | Ethan Carson Eddy | 22 Pace Envtl. L. Rev. 261 (Fall, 2005) |
This Article describes the model Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act its permutations currently pending in state legislatures, its proponents, and their motivations. It further explains the legal and rhetorical parallels between the Model Act and the USA Patriot Act. The Article predicts that courts will find the bills' constraints on speech to be undeniably content-based and without a sufficiently compelling state interest. In the end, the Article concludes by explaining how the bills exploit the USA Patriot Act's anti-terrorism rhetoric, and reveal a concerted corporate strategy to manipulate the term “terrorist” and capitalize on its potency, in an anticompetitive effort to secure protectionism from the adverse economic effects of criticism, protests, and boycotts. |
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