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From Labor to Media to First Amendment Scholars, More than 50 People and Organizations Agree the Iowa Ag-Gag Law Is Unconstitutional
I want to highlight the excellent amicus briefs submitted in support of the challenge to Iowa’s Ag-Gag law.
Ag-Gag laws seek to criminalize undercover investigations at factory farms and other animal agricultural facilities by making it illegal to take videos or photographs inside such facilities or failing to disclose one’s affiliation with an animal rights organization when applying for a job. In January of this year, we succeeded in having a court declare that Iowa’s Ag-Gag law is unconstitutional. Iowa appealed that decision. As part of the appeal, more than 50 people and organizations have signed onto amicus curiae, or friend of the court, briefs, explaining who they are, why they care, and why they agree that Iowa’s law is unconstitutional.
A brief of 24 First Amendment scholars written by the Yale Law School Media Freedom and Information Access Clinic details how deception is often used to gather news and provides historical details of journalists going undercover to report on the pre-Civil War slave trade, the execution of abolitionist John Brown, Gloria Steinem’s undercover exposé of the lives of Playboy Club Bunnies, and others.
The amicus brief for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and 22 other media organizations explains how the Iowa Ag-Gag law threatens journalism by criminalizing disclosures by sources to the press, otherwise chill the reporter-source relationship, and even chilling journalists themselves who fear prosecution under the statute’s conspiracy provision.
The United Farmworkers of America submitted a brief explaining that the Iowa Ag-Gag law compounds pressure on a workforce already facing disproportionate risk of injury, wage theft, forced labor, and sexual abuse and harassment in the workplace. By criminalizing reasonable steps taken in the investigation and documentation of unlawful employment conditions, the Ag-Gag law chills the ability of farm workers to investigate and document workplace violations and file formal complaints to vindicate their rights. UFW is represented by Advancing Law for Animals.
The Iowa Federation of Labor (AFL-CIO) submitted a brief explaining how the Ag-Gag law’s criminalization of using deception to gain employment at an agricultural facility threatens labor organizing and the protected union practice of “salting”—having union organizers obtain employment at a facility intending to encourage unionization.
Erwin Chemerisnky, Dean of Berkeley Law School, submitted a brief detailing the First Amendment protections afforded to false statements and how the Iowa law violates those protections.
Brook Kroeger and Ted Conover of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute are two of the leading experts in undercover investigative practices in journalism. Their brief details the crucial role of undercover reporting in journalism and how the Iowa Ag-Gag law endangers it. They are represented by the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Finally, the Iowa Freedom of Information Council, a nonprofit coalition of journalists, librarians, lawyers, educators, and other Iowans devoted to open government, submitted a brief explaining the dangers of the Iowa Ag-Gag law poses to open government and journalism.
Thank you to all these friends of the court in explaining how this law threatens not just animal rights activists but a wide variety of people, organizations, and interests!
There were no amicus briefs supporting the law.
And, of course, if you’re interested, here are the briefs of the parties in the case:
Protestors Sue Santa Anita Racetrack Over Security Guards' False Arrest and Assault
This weekend brought the 27th and 28th horse deaths at the Santa Anita, California racetrack. While everyone from Senator Feinstein to the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times has called for the track to suspend operations, the track stubbornly refuses. And unless the state racing commission steps up and forces the park to suspend racing, activists will keep showing up demanding an end to this pointless cruelty.
Back in March, eight activists showed up to the racetrack to protest the park’s continued operation given the mounting death toll. They sought to protest in the publicly-accessible parking lot outside the racetrack’s ticket gate. As they approached the parking lot, a battalion of Santa Anita security guards blocked their way with barriers and assaulted three of them, putting one into a chokehold, throwing another against a wall, and forcing the third to the ground. The other five were blocked from videorecording the assault and ordered to leave under threat that they, too, would be arrested and brutalized.
The park security called the police, who accepted the citizens’ arrests, but prosecutors rejected the charges.
My office, along with Jerry Friedman and Dave Simon, sued on behalf of the activists.
“This illegal behavior by Stronach Group and its henchmen shows the extreme steps they will take to keep a lid on the news of horses that keep dying under their watch,” said Heather Wilson, lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We hope this lawsuit will expose them for what they are: a group of callous thugs with no concern for animal welfare or human rights, who just want to put dollars in their pockets regardless of the social cost.”
Some local coverage of the lawsuit is here. A copy of the complaint is here.
Iowa Sued Again Over Unconstitutional Ag Gag Law
Today, my office, along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU of Iowa, PETA, the Center for Food Safety, Public Justice, and others, once again sued challenging Iowa’s second Ag Gag law.
Ag gag laws criminalize undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses, gagging animal rights activists and ensuring animal cruelty and inhumane working conditions go unreported.
Our coalition has defeated Ag Gag laws in Idaho and Utah and has challenges pending to laws in Kansas and North Carolina. We also defeated Iowa’s first Ag Gag law. The state was ordered to pay more than $180,000 in attorneys’ fees in that case.
In response to the federal court declaring that Iowa’s first Ag Gag law was unconstitutional, the state simply passed another. The new lawsuit seeks to enjoin enforcement of this latest law.
Read the complaint here.
The lawsuit contends that Iowa’s Ag Gag law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
My office, along with other members of the coalition, have already succeeded in striking down Ag Gag laws in Idaho and Utah as unconstitutional.
Iowa is one of the largest states for industrial animal agriculture. Iowa is by far the country’s biggest producer of pigs raised for meat and hens raised for eggs. More than 20 million pigs and 45 million egg-laying hens are raised in Iowa each year, with tens of millions more cows, chickens, turkeys, and goats raised in the state. Nearly all of these animals are raised on factory farms, subject to intensive confinement, routine mutilations, and deplorable conditions.
Undercover investigations are one of the few ways for the public to receive critical information about animal agriculture operations. A 2012 consumer survey conducted by Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Department of Animal Sciences found that the public relies on the information gathered and presented by animal protection groups and investigative journalists more than they rely on industry groups and the government combined.
View the complaint here.
Amicus Brief Filed In Support of Challenge to Arkansas's Anti-Boycott Law
Today my office filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal in support of the challengers to Arkansas’s unconstitutional anti-boycott law. The law requires contractors who want to do business with the state to pledge not to boycott Israel. As the brief explains, the Arkansas law is part of a broad effort to punish advocacy of Palestinian rights and those who seek boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against the Israeli government, in violation of the First Amendment.
Full press release below and available here:
Rights Groups Urge Court to Overturn Decision on Arkansas Anti-Boycott Law
Contact: press@ccrjustice.org
April 16, 2019 – Today, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Palestine Legal, and the Law Office of Matthew Strugar filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of a lawsuit seeking to strike down an Arkansas law that requires government contractors to pledge not to boycott Israel. The lawsuit and the amicus brief in support of it argue that the law violates the First Amendment. The filing situates the Arkansas law as part of a broader effort to suppress speech in support of Palestinian human rights.
“Arkansas can’t suppress boycotts for Palestinian rights just because the government disagrees with the message that Palestinians deserve freedom and equality,” said Palestine Legal Senior Staff Attorney Radhika Sainath. “The Court of Appeals has an opportunity to fix this and ensure that there is no First Amendment exception when it comes to Palestine.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of The Arkansas Times, which lost substantial ad revenue after its publisher refused to sign the no-boycott pledge on the principle that contractors should not be compelled to speak against boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) for Palestinian rights, even though the newspaper itself takes no position on BDS.
A U.S. district court judge dismissed the ACLU’s lawsuit in January, deviating from two other courts that enjoined similar laws in Arizona and Kansas because boycotts for Palestinian rights are protected by the First Amendment, just as the Supreme Court recognized in the landmark NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware with regard to peaceful civil rights boycotts of white businesses in Mississippi. In its appeal, the ACLU argued that the district court’s decision, if allowed to stand, would set a dangerous precedent by allowing state legislatures to punish disfavored viewpoints.
“Anti-BDS laws are just another desperate attempt to suppress demands for equality for Palestinians,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Deputy Legal Director Maria LaHood. “They not only violate the Constitution, they are also on the wrong side of history.”
The amicus brief provides context for the court, making clear that Arkansas’ anti-boycott law and similar measures in 26 other states are part of a broader nationwide effort by Israel advocacy groups to suppress speech in support of Palestinian rights. Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights have documented censorship efforts on college campuses, against public libraries, and at other institutions. Advocates for Palestinian human rights have lost jobs and incomes and faced harassment for their advocacy. The clear intent of the legislation and other censorship efforts is to silence viewpoints in support of Palestinian rights.
Read the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal’s amicus brief filed today here.
Palestine Legal protects the civil and constitutional rights of people in the U.S. who speak out for Palestinian freedom. Learn more at palestinelegal.org.
The Law Office of Matthew Strugar is a First Amendment and protesters’ rights law firm based in Los Angeles, California. Learn more at matthewstrugar.com/.
The Center for Constitutional Rights works with communities under threat to fight for justice and liberation through litigation, advocacy, and strategic communications. Since 1966, The Center for Constitutional Rights has taken on oppressive systems of power, including structural racism, gender oppression, economic inequity, and governmental overreach. Learn more at ccrjustice.org.
Federal Court Orders Iowa to Pay $180,000 Over Unconstitutional Ag Gag Law
Earlier this year, a federal court ruled that Iowa’s Ag Gag Law, which made it a crime to go undercover investigations at factory farms and other animal agricultural facilities to expose cruelty, was unconstitutional. The court struck down the law under the First Amendment. A coalition of animals rights, food safety, and workers’ rights organization brought the case.
Now the Court has ordered the state to pay $181,623.13 to the attorneys who brought who the case. Federal law allows for courts to order states and local governments to pay the challengers’ legal fees if the court finds that the government’s actions were unconstitutional.
Together with the fees awarded after successfully striking down Utah and Idaho’s Ag Gag laws, these three states have been ordered to collectively pay for $600,000 for enacting and defending these unconstitutional laws.
We currently have cases pending against Kansas and North Carolina’s Ag Gag laws.
Federal Court Declares Iowa Ag-Gag Law Unconstitutional
We defeated another Ag-Gag law!
Today the federal court for the Southern District of Iowa granted summary judgment to our clients in our challenge to the Iowa Ag-Gag law and struck down the law as unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Ag-Gag laws seek to criminalize undercover investigations at factory farms and other animal agricultural facilities by making it illegal to take videos or photographs inside such facilities or failing to disclose one’s affiliation with an animal rights organization when applying for a job.
As the court recognized, Iowa passed its law in response to media attention focused on the horrific cruelty in Iowa’s factory farms:
For example, in 2011, an undercover investigation at Iowa Select Farms produced reports of workers hurling small piglets onto a concrete floor. Another investigation at Iowa’s Sparboe Farms, documented reported mistreatment of hens and chicks. And yet another, conducted by PETA, exposed workers at a Hormel Foods supplier in Iowa “beating pigs with metal rods,” “sticking clothespins into pigs’ eyes and faces, and a super- visor kicking a young pig in the face, abdomen, and genitals to make her move while telling the investigator, ‘You gotta beat on the bitch. Make her cry.’”
Iowa is one of the largest states for industrial animal agriculture. Iowa is by far the country’s biggest producer of pigs raised for meat and hens raised for eggs. More than 20 million pigs and 45 million egg-laying hens are raised in Iowa each year, with tens of millions more cows, chickens, turkeys, and goats raised in the state. Nearly all of these animals are raised on factory farms, subject to intensive confinement, routine mutilations, and deplorable conditions.
With this ruling, animal right advocates should be free once again to inform the public of the horrific cruelty of factory farming.
This victory comes on the heels of our victories against Ag-Gag laws in Utah and Idaho, and we have pending challenges against Ag-Gag laws in Kansas and North Carolina.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Bailing Out Benji, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the Center for Food Safety. Together with my office, they are represented by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Iowa, and Public Justice.
Animal Rights Groups File Challenge to Kansas Ag-Gag Law
Today, my office, along with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Food Safety, Public Justice, and Kansas advocacy groups Shy 38 and Hope Sanctuary, filed a lawsuit challenging Kansas’s Ag-Gag law. Like Ag-Gag laws in other states, the Kansas law criminalizes undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses, silencing animal rights activists and ensuring animal cruelty, unsafe food safety practices, environmental hazards, and inhumane working conditions go unreported. The lawsuit contends that Kansas’s Ag Gag law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
My office, along with other members of the coalition, have already succeeded in striking down Ag-Gag laws in Idaho and Utah as unconstitutional, and we are litigating challenges to similar laws in Iowa and North Carolina.
Undercover investigations are one of the few ways for the public to receive critical information about animal agriculture operations. A 2012 consumer survey conducted by Purdue University’s Department of Agricultural Economics and Department of Animal Sciences found that the public relies on the information gathered and presented by animal protection groups and investigative journalists more than they rely on industry groups and the government combined.
View the complaint here.
Lawsuit filed for ACLU for Info on ICE Practice of Posing as Local Police
Today my office filed a lawsuit on behalf of the ACLU of Southern California seeing seeks records about Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ practice of posing as local police departments investigating non-immigration related crimes, wearing misleading uniforms, and engaging in other deceptive conduct to conceal their identity. Through these ruses, ICE agents have tried to gain an individual’s consent to enter their home or other private property without a warrant.
This practice has been widely reported in the media.
The ACLU of Southern California submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request seeking information related to ICE agents’ practice of misrepresenting or concealing their identity when conducting enforcement actions. But after more than eight months, they still haven’t received any responsive documents.
We are suing to force ICE to force it to provide these records. Read the complaint here.