{"id":565,"date":"2024-01-08T17:16:26","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T21:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/?p=565"},"modified":"2024-01-09T20:15:14","modified_gmt":"2024-01-10T00:15:14","slug":"animal-rights-challenge-to-iowa-ag-gag-law-fails-in-eighth-circuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/2024\/01\/08\/animal-rights-challenge-to-iowa-ag-gag-law-fails-in-eighth-circuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Animal Rights Challenge to Iowa \u201cAg Gag Law” Fails in Eighth Circuit"},"content":{"rendered":"

On January 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected a constitutional challenge brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other groups to an Iowa statute that prohibits \u201cagricultural facility fraud.\u201d\u00a0 Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Reynolds<\/em>, No. 22-1830 (8th Cir. Jan. 8, 2024).<\/a>\u00a0 Statutes like this are often termed \u201cag gag laws\u201d by their opponents.\u00a0 The district court had declared that the law violates the First Amendment, but the court of appeals reversed.<\/p>\n

The law at issue, Iowa Code \u00a7 717A.3B(1)(a)-(b), was enacted in response to a prior law that the Eighth Circuit had determined had certain constitutional shortcomings.\u00a0 (We reported on that case here<\/a>.)\u00a0 Under the revised statute, unlawful \u201cagricultural facility fraud\u201d arises in two instances. \u00a0First<\/u>, the trespass provision is violated when a person uses deception to gain access to an agricultural production facility \u201cwith the intent to cause physical or economic harm or other injury\u201d to the facility\u2019s operations, animals, crops, owner, personnel, equipment, buildings, premises, business interests or customers.\u00a0 Second<\/u>, the employment provision is violated when a person uses deception to gain employment at such an agricultural production facility with intent to cause the same type of harm to the same type of victims or targets as the trespass provision.<\/p>\n

From a farmer\u2019s viewpoint, such a law is necessary to keep animal rights activists from trespassing onto farms or lying about who they are to get employed in order to expose what the activists claim are bad animal welfare conditions.\u00a0 Such activist intrusions sometimes result in theft of animals (or, as activists describe it, \u201crescues\u201d) and run the risk of compromising biosecurity by bringing pathogens into areas where animals are kept.\u00a0 On the other hand, the activists claim that such a law violates their right to free speech.\u00a0 In this case, they claimed that the Iowa law was unconstitutional because it was a content-based restriction on speech that could not survive strict scrutiny. \u00a0The Eighth Circuit disagreed.<\/p>\n

According to the court, while false or deceptive speech is not per se unprotected, a state nevertheless may constitutionally prohibit intentionally false speech undertaken to accomplish legally cognizable harm.\u00a0 The Iowa law is constitutional because it focuses on the intent to inflict a cognizable harm, not on the content of what is being said.\u00a0 As the court explained, both the trespass and employment provisions of the law<\/p>\n

permissibly forbid[] false statements that result in legally cognizable harm.\u00a0 The law\u2019s reference to the content of speech (false statements) is constitutional because \u201cthe basis for the content discrimination consists entirely of the very reason the entire class of speech at issue is proscribable.\u201d\u00a0 \u2026\u00a0 [T]he supplemental intent requirement does not distinguish among speakers based on their viewpoints. \u00a0If a person uses deception to gain employment with intent to harm a facility, the offender would be liable for deceptively praising the facility (\u201cI love the work you do, and I want to support it!\u201d) or deceptively criticizing the facility (\u201cThis facility is poorly managed, and I will help increase profits.\u201d). \u00a0The statute does not prefer laudatory lies over critical falsehoods.\u00a0 [Slip op. at 7 (citations omitted).]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nor was the court persuaded by cases from other circuits that had found other similar laws invalid:<\/p>\n

We are not persuaded by these decisions that the Iowa statute is unconstitutional. \u00a0The intent element determines whether particular conduct violates the statute, but it does not mean that a violation turns on the viewpoint of an offender\u2019s deceptive speech. \u00a0Rather, the intent requirement permissibly reflects \u201cthe general view that criminal punishment should be reserved for those who intend the harm they commit.\u201d \u00a0\u2026 \u00a0The statute filters out trespassers who are relatively innocuous, and focuses the criminal law on conduct that inflicts greater harm on victims and society. \u00a0In our view, the Iowa statute is not a viewpoint-based restriction on speech, but rather a permissible restriction on intentionally false speech undertaken to accomplish a legally cognizable harm.\u00a0 [Slip op. at 9 (citation omitted).]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This is an important decision for the agricultural community, and in particular, farmers in Iowa.\u00a0 Pork producers and their farms have often been the targets of animal rights groups. \u00a0According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture\u2019s National Agricultural Statistics Service, as of September 1, 2023, of the approximately 74.3 million head of hogs and pigs in the United States, 24.4 million of them were in Iowa, which is the largest pork-producing state in the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On January 8, 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit rejected a constitutional challenge brought by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other groups to an Iowa statute that prohibits \u201cagricultural facility fraud.\u201d\u00a0 Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Reynolds, No. 22-1830 (8th Cir. Jan. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Animal Rights Challenge to Iowa \u201cAg Gag Law” Fails in Eighth Circuit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":317,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[797,97,49,156,21,1010,187,5,101,45],"ppma_author":[697],"class_list":["post-565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-ag-gag-laws","tag-aldf","tag-animal-law","tag-animal-legal-defense-fund","tag-animal-rights","tag-content-based-speech-restrictions","tag-first-amendment","tag-john-simpson","tag-people-for-the-ethical-treatment-of-animals","tag-peta"],"authors":[{"term_id":697,"user_id":317,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jmsimpson","display_name":"John M. Simpson","avatar_url":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/38\/2018\/06\/simpsonjohn-125x150.jpg","0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/317"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.duanemorris.com\/animallawdevelopments\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}