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Supreme Court Rules against H$U$. #2056310
07/10/10 08:52 AM
07/10/10 08:52 AM
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Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
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U.S. Supreme Court rules against HSUS, implications (Lakeland Times)‏

Sent: July 9, 2010 2:11:36 PM



Lakeland Times (FL)
Media, Humane Society of the U.S. clash in free speech case
Justices strike down federal animal cruelty law as overbroad
Richard Moore: Investigative Reporter
7/9/2010
http://www.lakelandtimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=9&SubSectionID=9&ArticleID=11611

In a major decision concerning First Amendment rights, and in which
major media organizations clashed with animal-rights groups such as
the Humane Society of the U.S., the U.S. Supreme Court has tossed out
a federal statute outlawing depictions of animal cruelty.

In U.S. v. Stevens, the issue was not so much animal cruelty as it was
its statutory definition, which, on an 8-1 vote, the justices said was
constitutionally overbroad.

The federal statute made it illegal "to knowingly create, sell or
possess a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing
that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain .
. . ."

It defined a depiction of animal cruelty as "any photograph,
motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image or sound
recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed,
mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed if such conduct is illegal
under federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale
or possession takes place, regardless of whether the (conduct) took
place in the state."

The law was passed during the Clinton administration, without
controversy, because it was intended to outlaw the depiction of
"extreme" conduct, such as dogfighting.

In 2004, indeed, in the events leading to this decision, Robert
Stevens was convicted for publishing a book about pit bulls, in
addition to DVDs that included footage of dogfighting in Japan.

Stevens appealed his conviction and challenged the constitutionality
of the law. He was joined in support by such organizations as the
National Rifle Association, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the
Press, the New York Times, The Newspaper Guild,the Newspaper
Association of America, and others.

All objected on First Amendment grounds and to what they called the
law's potential application to normal media activities.

The Lakeland Times: Illegal?

The NRA, for example, contended it could break the statute simply by
mailing a copy of its magazine American Hunter to someone in Florida,
if that copy contained an article about bear hunting. There is no bear
hunting season in Florida.

The same would be true for The Lakeland Times, if it mailed an article
and photographs about bear hunting to a subscriber in Florida.

"This case concerns an issue critical to the media specifically and
the public in general: whether the Government can criminalize the
possession and dissemination of a broad range of depictions involving
animals," the brief for the media organizations stated. "(News
organizations) often expose the abuse of animals, participate in the
national debate over the proper treatment of them, and cover
commonplace activities involving animals such as hunting and fishing.
(The federal statute) compromises the news media's ability to perform
any of these functions without fear of prosecution."

The news organizations agreed that the intent of the law, which was to
ban such things as crush videos, was a worthy one. Crush videos
include footage of women, their faces obscured, stomping animals to
death with spiked heels.

Exposing such activity is essential, the news media brief stated, but
such investigatory reports should not themselves be illegal.

"It is this very interest in protecting animals from abuse that makes
speech about their treatment so valuable," the brief stated. "Press
coverage serves the community by exposing animal cruelty such as crush
videos, animal fighting and the mistreatment of animals at some puppy
mills and slaughterhouses. At the same time, the press regularly
covers fishing, hunting, and other broadly accepted activities which,
in some cases, fall within the scope of the statute. And the news
media has long contributed to debates about what treatment of animals
- from fox hunting to circuses to factory farming - should be
prohibited as unduly cruel."

The media organizations observed that the statute carved out only
limited exemptions for "serious" journalism while criminalizing all
possession of non-exempt material. The way the law was written allowed
the government - and juries - to decide journalistic value and
seriousness and left protection too much to prosecutorial discretion,
the brief stated.

"Nor can speakers rely on prosecutorial discretion, because at least
one private group has used (the federal law) in combination with local
consumer protection laws to sue Amazon.com and several publishers,
demanding damages as well as injunctive relief," the media brief
stated.

In that case,the Humane Society of the U.S. sued Amazon.com for
selling two cockfighting magazines, The Feathered Warrior and The
Gamecock. The company vowed to continue selling them, saying they were
legal and that refusing to sell books or magazines because their
messages might offend someone was censorship.

Humane Society weighs in

The Humane Society of the U.S. also filed a brief in this case,
defending the federal statute, and Humane Society president and CEO
Wayne Pacelle, writing on his blog, said he was disappointed with the
decision.

"The U.S. Supreme Court dealt animals a serious blow in its ruling
today, upholding an appellate court decision that invalidated the
federal law banning the commercial sale of videos showing illegal and
extreme acts of animal cruelty," he wrote. "The Court got hung up in a
stream of hypothetical scenarios, imagining that the law as worded
might sweep up the sellers of hunting, bullfighting, and other videos
that the federal lawmakers never intended to address."

Pacelle said society had reached a consensus that animal fighting and
malicious animal crush videos constitute cruelty.

"In order to give those values meaning, we need a set of laws that not
only prohibit the core conduct, but also the sale of videos showing
the illegal conduct," he wrote. "People victimize animals to make
these videos, and to profit from them. If we cannot criminalize that
behavior, we will have little hope of halting this disgusting and
morally abhorrent activity."

In its brief, the Humane Society said the depictions of animal cruelty
covered by the federal statute were obscene and not entitled to
heightened constitutional scrutiny, and that early federal statutes
proscribed a wide range of "obscene" materials thought to be injurious
to public morality, extending beyond those with a "lascivious bent."

Depictions of animal cruelty qualify as that kind of obscene speech,
the Humane Society asserted.

"Obscene speech does not warrant full First Amendment protection
because it plays 'no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and
[is] of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit
that may be derived from [it] is clearly outweighed by the social
interest in order and morality,'" its brief stated.

But those opposed to the law responded that the law's language was too
vague and overbroad and could apply the label of obscenity to many
activities, and they targeted an old quote by Pacelle to make the
point.

"The definition of obscenity on the newsstands should be extended to
many hunting magazines," Pacelle was quoted in 1993, in Bloodties:
Nature, Culture and the Hunt by Ted Kerasote, before he became
president of the Humane Society, according to the NRA.

The government's case

For it part, the U.S. government maintained that isolated
hypotheticals did not justify invalidating the entire law.

"Congress included in (the law) a number of features designed to limit
its application in a manner consistent with the First Amendment," the
government argued. "The statute covers only depictions of extreme acts
of animal cruelty - intentional maiming, mutilating, torturing,
wounding, or killing - that are illegal where the depictions are made,
sold, or possessed."

Moreover, the government added, the statute applied only to depictions
of cruelty to live animals and covered only depictions intentionally
placed in the commercial interstate market and, as such, did not apply
to possession of images of animal cruelty for personal use.

"The mere possibility of some unconstitutional applications, however,
is not enough to justify facial invalidity for overbreadth," the
government continued. " . . . That is because few statutes would
survive an overbreadth challenge if a challenger needed only to
hypothesize a handful of unconstitutional applications."

As an example, the government used the notion of bullfighting in
Spain, a hypothetical in which the court of appeals suggested that a
person could be prosecuted for a bullfight in Spain if bullfighting is
illegal in the state in which a person sold a film of it.

Not so, the government contended, because the law specifically exempts
material with "educational," "journalistic," or "historical" value.

High Court doesn't agree

The justices were not swayed by the government's argument, saying the
government's entire case rested on interpreting the statute as
narrowly limited to specific types of "extreme" material.

When they looked at the law, the justices stated, they saw something different.

"We read (the statute) to create a criminal prohibition of alarming
breadth," wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority. "To begin
with, the text of the statute's ban on a 'depiction of animal cruelty'
nowhere requires that the depicted conduct be cruel. That text applies
to 'any . . . depiction' in which 'a living animal is intentionally
maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed.'"

While such words as 'maimed' and 'mutilated' conveyed cruelty, Roberts
continued, the words 'wounded' and 'killed' did not suggest any such
limitation.

What's more, he stated, the application of the law extended to
depictions of conduct that were illegal in only a single jurisdiction.
So a depiction of entirely lawful conduct "runs afoul of the ban" if
that depiction later finds its way into another state where the same
conduct is unlawful.

And that, Roberts said, greatly expanded the scope of the law. While
there may be a broad social consensus against cruelty to animals, he
stated, there is substantial disagreement on what particular types of
conduct are regarded as cruel.

"In the District of Columbia, for example, all hunting is unlawful,"
Roberts wrote. "Other jurisdictions permit or encourage hunting, and
there is an enormous national market for hunting-related depictions in
which a living animal is intentionally killed. Hunting periodicals
have circulations in the hundreds of thousands or millions."

Nonetheless, he concluded, because the statute allows each
jurisdiction to export its laws to the rest of the country, the
statute extends to any magazine or video depicting lawful hunting,
when that depiction is sold within the nation's capital.

That scope is far too broad, Roberts wrote.

Judge Samuel Alito was the only justice to dissent in the case, but he
did so only because he was opposed to throwing out the entire statute.
He proposed narrowing the scope to the original intentions of
Congress.

Richard Moore can be reached at rmmoore1@verizon.net.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Supreme Court Rules against H$U$. [Re: Mira Trapper] #2056425
07/10/10 11:35 AM
07/10/10 11:35 AM
Joined: Dec 2006
Posts: 4,330
Fairbanks, Alaska
Pete in Frbks Offline
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Pete in Frbks  Offline
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Score one for the good guys.

In reading the opinion, I found that there are numerous references to "hunting videos" and how hunting is an accepted and traditional practice in the US. This decision is great legal precedent!

Re: Supreme Court Rules against H$U$. [Re: Pete in Frbks] #2056456
07/10/10 12:17 PM
07/10/10 12:17 PM
Joined: Dec 2006
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St. Louis Co, Mo
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BigBob Offline
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BigBob  Offline
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I don't think peta made a pamphlet that DIDN'T show staged pics of animals suffering/bleeding etc, and usually in a trap!


Every kid needs a Dog and a Curmudgeon.

Remember Bowe Bergdahl, the traitor.

Beware! Jill Pudlewski, Ron Oates and Keven Begesse are liars and thiefs!
Re: Supreme Court Rules against H$U$. [Re: BigBob] #2056879
07/11/10 08:47 AM
07/11/10 08:47 AM
Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
Mira Trapper Offline OP
trapper
Mira Trapper  Offline OP
trapper

Joined: Sep 2007
Posts: 2,777
Cape Breton Island Nova Scotia
The H$U$ites couldn't raise animals themselves in an ideal environment. Yet H$U$ have enough political savvy to over-rule veterinarians & farmers who have generations of experience in animal husbandry in their ability to sell their products. Net result is the farmers & consumers will be adversely affected by H$U$ite interference which will make eggs harder to sell.

CA passes bill to require "Prop 2" standards on all sold eggs (CCF)‏

Sent: July 9, 2010 5:12:05 PM

Center for Consumer Freedom
Animal Rights Ripple Effects
July 9, 2010
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/4212-animal-rights-ripple-effects

On Tuesday, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into
law that will require all eggs sold in the state (starting in 2015) to
come from producers compliant with “Proposition 2” standards. The 2008
"Prop 2" ballot initiative, you'll remember, was the clever brainchild
of the animal-rights pushing Humane Society of the United States
(HSUS). For the Governator, it was damned if you do, damned if you
don’t. Not signing it would have put California’s egg producers at a
competitive disadvantage. But as we read yesterday at the Des Moines
Register, Arnold’s signature means that egg farms all across America
could be forced to change.

In other words, HSUS’s trail-blazing with one ballot initiative is
having ripple effects in other states.

Before this law was signed, University of California-Davis researchers
predicted that it would devastate California’s egg industry. But now
that Prop 2 will be applied to out-of-state farmers who want to sell
eggs to Californians as well, the same researchers predict that the
cost of eggs will rise everywhere.

The chief result? “People will eat fewer eggs,” one researcher told
the San Francisco Chronicle. Which is exactly what HSUS was after in
its quest to move Americans towards a PETA-approved diet.

Also troubling is that Prop 2’s standards are remarkably
vague—something HSUS has encouraged. HSUS opposed an attempt to allow
the California government to explicitly translate Prop 2’s general
statements into specific regulations that businesses could easily
implement. This means HSUS is now able to challenge one farm’s $3.2
million renovation to be Prop 2-compliant. (HSUS has to keep 30
in-house lawyers busy somehow…)

The economic damage has already begun—not only with Prop 2, but with
HSUS’s "Buckeye Compromise" in Ohio. So what’s the moral of the story?
Playing defense against HSUS is a sure way to come up empty on the
scoreboard.


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Mac Leod Motto
Re: Supreme Court Rules against H$U$. [Re: Mira Trapper] #2056888
07/11/10 09:01 AM
07/11/10 09:01 AM

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Ballot initiative is like a cancer. Do not let it spread to your State !

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