On this day in vegan history · July 7, 2017
A Federal Judge Guts Utah's Ag-Gag Law
Four years after a woman was charged for filming a downer cow from across the street, a federal judge ruled that Utah's ban on undercover farm footage never had a constitutional leg to stand on.
The facts
- Date of ruling
- July 7, 2017
- Judge
- Robert J. Shelby, U.S. District Court for Utah
- Law struck down
- Utah Code § 76-6-112, enacted 2012
- Plaintiffs
- Animal Legal Defense Fund, PETA, and activist Amy Meyer
On July 7, 2017, U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby struck down Utah's 2012 agricultural operation interference law, ruling that its ban on filming inside farms and slaughterhouses without the owner's consent violated the First Amendment. The Animal Legal Defense Fund and PETA had sued on behalf of Amy Meyer, an activist who in 2013 became the first person charged under the statute after she filmed a forklift pushing a sick cow outside a Draper meatpacking plant from a public roadside; prosecutors dropped her charge within a day once the case went viral, but she stayed on as a plaintiff in the broader challenge. Shelby's ruling made Utah's the second state ag-gag law to fall, after Idaho's in 2015.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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Utah undoubtedly has an interest in addressing perceived threats to the state agricultural industry, and as history shows, it has a variety of constitutionally permissible tools at its disposal to do so.
Judge Robert J. Shelby, ruling in Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Herbert, July 7, 2017
Source: Food Safety News -
These unconstitutional laws will fall like dominoes
Stephen Wells, Animal Legal Defense Fund executive director, statement after the ruling
Source: Animal Legal Defense Fund
Why it still matters
It confirmed that laws written to punish people for exposing what happens inside factory farms and slaughterhouses cannot survive a First Amendment challenge, a precedent that fed the wave of ag-gag laws struck down in other states in the years since.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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