PETA Foundation Legal ‘Ag-Gag’ Case Summaries
Background
In 1906, Upton Sinclair published The Jungle, an exposé of the slaughter and meatpacking industries that exposed their rampant exploitation and deplorable conditions in an arguably unprecedented and detailed account. He reputedly spent approximately six months personally investigating Chicago’s meatpacking industry as a private citizen to obtain the information that made his novel so compelling. The public appropriately responded to his revelations with outrage, which contributed to the passage of several laws intended to improve conditions and food safety in these industries.
More than a century later, the meatpacking industry, as well as factory farming and animal agriculture generally, are still plagued by conditions that not only threaten the health and safety of workers but also allow extreme cruelty to animals. These industries rely in part on hiding what goes on within the walls of their facilities in order to stave off the intense public criticism that would follow if the truth became more widely known.
The animal agriculture industry is acutely aware of the power a single eyewitness investigator can have to galvanize the public to take a firm stance against its cruelty, but rather than cleaning up its act, it works to persuade state legislators to pass laws that penalize anyone who seeks to reveal its horrors.
Unfortunately, many state legislatures have listened to the industry, passing various types of laws “gagging” those who seek to investigate animal agriculture operations and share true information with the public about their cruelty and hazardous conditions. These laws either criminalize or allow for lawsuits to be brought against those who document or expose animal abuse at agricultural facilities or seek employment there as a means of investigating them.
Such laws have come to be known as “ag-gag” laws. Given the historically powerful role investigations by private citizens and nongovernmental organizations have played in informing the public and exposing systemic and egregious issues in the industry—employment-based investigation is one of the few tools private citizens have to pierce its cloak of secrecy and expose ongoing abuse—these laws threaten to prioritize industry profits over the health and safety of humans and animals.
PETA, along with several other organizations affected by these laws, continues to challenge their legality and constitutionality, particularly to the extent that they violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees of free speech and a free press, which forbid the government to punish or discriminate against individuals because of their opinions and restrain the free flow of ideas and newsworthy information and evidence.
PETA has been part of a coalition of organizations challenging ag-gag laws across the country, including in Idaho, North Carolina, and Utah, and in a lawsuit currently pending in Iowa.
North Carolina
Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. Stein
Index Number: 1:16-cv-00025; 20-1776
Court: U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
A North Carolina statute allows a property owner to sue anyone who engages in an unauthorized act, as defined by the statute, on their property for monetary damages. The statute defines recording as one of the prohibited acts even though First Amendment case law clarifies that some types of recording qualify as constitutionally protected speech.
A coalition of organizations, including PETA, sued to block enforcement of this law. The district court agreed that the law was unconstitutional as written, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit limited that decision by ruling that the law could not be applied to the plaintiff organizations’ newsgathering activities. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal from North Carolina, which leaves PETA’s successful challenge to the applicability of North Carolina’s law to its investigations in the state intact.
The plaintiffs were entitled to legal fees for the successful challenge, and the parties settled for the amount of $884,987.
Iowa
Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. Reynolds
Index Number: 4:21-cv-00231; 22-3464
Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Following the coalition’s successful challenges to the constitutionality of Iowa’s first two ag-gag statutes, the state passed a third ag-gag law, switching its strategy from criminalizing false speech to criminalizing video and photographic recording. PETA and its coplaintiffs filed a new suit challenging this law. The district court again sided with the coalition, finding that the recording prohibition as written was incompatible with the First Amendment. However, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit disagreed when Iowa appealed. The parties are now litigating PETA’s and Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement’s remaining claims in the district court concerning whether the law may be constitutionally applied to their investigative activity even if the law is valid as written.
Idaho
Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. Otter
Index Number: 1:14-cv-00104; 15-35960
Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
Idaho enacted a law criminalizing “interference with agricultural production,” which prohibited conduct, including gaining access to farms by misrepresentation—such as an investigator withholding that their true purpose for working at a facility is to document cruel and illegal conduct—and making audio or video recordings without the consent of the owner.
PETA worked with its coalition partners to challenge the law, and the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho determined that it violated the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantee the right to free speech and to protection from state laws that infringe on personal freedom, respectively. This decision marked the first time that a court had declared an ag-gag statute unconstitutional. The state appealed, and the Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part the lower court’s ruling. The circuit court affirmed that Idaho’s ban on using audio or video recordings to document conditions on factory farms and at slaughterhouses violates the First Amendment and allowed a provision prohibiting obtaining employment at a farm by misrepresentation with intent to cause economic or other injury to stand.
The plaintiffs were entitled to legal fees for the successful challenge, and the parties settled for the amount of $260,000.
Utah
Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. Herbert
Index Number: 2:13-cv-00679
Court: U.S. District Court for the District of Utah
In 2012, Utah enacted a law prohibiting, in relevant part, gaining access to agricultural operations by false pretenses, such as by lying on an employment application or by taking photographs or making recordings without the owner’s consent once inside. In the first of their lawsuits, PETA and others challenged the law along with plaintiff Amy Meyer, who was the first person ever charged with violating an ag-gag law after she filmed from public property Utah slaughterhouse workers apparently pushing a sick cow with a bulldozer.
The U.S. District Court for the District of Utah found that the law violated the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court remarked that there was no evidence “that animal or employee safety are endangered” by undercover investigations, which the state claimed the law was intended to protect, and the law instead appeared designed to “prevent[] undercover investigators from exposing abuses at agricultural facilities.”
The plaintiffs received the legal fees to which they were entitled for the successful challenge.
