On this day in vegan history · August 3, 2015
Idaho's Ag-Gag Law Falls
A federal judge looked at a law written to punish people for filming cows getting beaten and called it what it was: censorship dressed up as farm policy.
The facts
- Ruling date
- August 3, 2015
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, Judge B. Lynn Winmill
- Case
- Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Otter
- Origin
- 2012 Mercy for Animals undercover video at Bettencourt Dairies' Dry Creek Dairy, Hansen, Idaho
On August 3, 2015, U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill struck down Idaho's Agricultural Security Act, ruling it violated the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause. The law, signed by Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter in February 2014, made it a crime to secretly film conditions at farms and dairies. It was a direct response to a 2012 Mercy for Animals investigation at Bettencourt Dairies' Dry Creek Dairy in Hansen, Idaho, where an undercover worker recorded employees dragging, beating, and stomping on cows. The Animal Legal Defense Fund and a coalition of press, labor, and civil liberties groups sued, and Winmill agreed the state had criminalized speech to protect an industry from scrutiny rather than to protect anyone from real harm.
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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Although the State may not agree with the message certain groups seek to convey about Idaho's agricultural production facilities, such as releasing secretly recorded videos of animal abuse to the Internet and calling for boycotts, it cannot deny such groups equal protection of the laws in their exercise of their right to free speech.
Judge B. Lynn Winmill, ruling in Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Otter, August 3, 2015
Source: Center for Food Safety -
Protecting the private interests of a powerful industry, which produces the public's food supply, against public scrutiny is not a legitimate government interest.
Judge B. Lynn Winmill, ruling in Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Otter, August 3, 2015
Source: Center for Food Safety
Why it still matters
It was the first ag-gag law in the country to be struck down in court, and it gave every later challenge, including the ones that followed in Utah, Wyoming, and elsewhere, a working legal blueprint. The Ninth Circuit upheld the core First Amendment holding in 2018.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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