A federal appeals court has ruled that parts of Kansas’ “ag-gag” law, which was among the first laws in the nation that restricts undercover animal rights activists, violates First Amendment rights, and upheld a permanent prohibition against the state enforcing the provisions, Reuters reports.
The 2-1 decision was reached by a panel held in the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Kansas’ appeal of two Kansas City federal court rulings, that say sections of the Kansas Farm Anima and Field Crop and Research Facilities Protection Act that “run afoul” of free speech protections as designated under the First Amendment. The law aims to deter undercover efforts by animal rights activists such as the co-plaintiff, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), to document animal abuse at livestock operations, Reuters says.
The challenge of the 1990 law was brought by ALDF and others in 2018, challenging the constitutionality on the grounds of freedom of speech.
Reuters reports that Kansas’ ag-gag law was the first nationwide according to a 2017 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights and makes it a crime to use false statements to enter an animal facility that is closed to the public with the intent to damage the business and without the owner’s consent. It is also a crime to remain concealed to take photos and recordings.
In initial rulings, U.S. District Judge Kathryn Vratil, stated that the plaintiffs had standing to challenge three subsections of Kansas’ law, and concluded that the state hadn’t tailored the law in a way that restricts but also protects speech. In its appeal Kansas argued that the law forbids conduct, not speech, and only prohibits unprotected, false speech that is made with the intent to harm.
This law is one of about a dozen such “ag-gag” state laws, which have been challenged numerous times. Recently the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated a First Amendment challenge to Arkansas’ “ag-gag” law and ruled that a key part of Iowa’s law passes constitutional muster, Reuters explains.
In the appeal ruling U.S. Circuit Judge Carolyn McHugh wrote that the subsections that are the focus of the appeal do regulate speech, rather than only conduct, because they control what individuals can say in order to gain access to livestock operations, Reuters reports.
In his dissent, U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz said he would have held the act is not unconstitutional, Reuters says.
“Lies uttered to obtain consent to enter the premises of an agricultural facility are not protected speech,” he wrote.
