Public interest coalition celebrates another win against unconstitutional statute barring undercover investigations at factory farms.
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa held
unconstitutional Iowa’s second Ag-Gag law, also known as Iowa Ag-Gag
2.0, holding that the law criminalizing undercover investigations at
factory farms, slaughterhouses, and puppy mills violates the First
Amendment. The law, which is similar to the state’s first Ag-Gag
statute, gagged free speech by criminalizing undercover
investigations at animal facilities, deterring the exposure of
animal cruelty, unsafe working conditions, and food safety threats
in such facilities.
After the coalition succeeded in striking down Iowa’s first Ag-Gag
law at the district court level, the state wasted no time in passing
Ag-Gag 2.0, creating the new crime of “agricultural production
facility trespass”. The second law criminalized the same
investigative activities as the first, targeting a slightly
different form of speech integral to those investigations.
“It is incomprehensible that Iowa legislators continue to waste
Iowans’ taxpayer dollars to pass and defend unconstitutional laws
that suppress free speech simply to protect their own financial
interests,” says Animal Legal Defense Fund Executive Director
Stephen Wells. “We hope this ruling sends a clear message that the
Iowa legislature should cease its efforts to pass unconstitutional
Ag-Gag laws.”
The ability to investigate, document, and publicize corporate
agriculture’s abuses is imperative both to the well-being of animals
across the nation and to public health and safety. Undercover
investigations are also important for workers’ rights, and the
ruling striking down the original Ag-Gag law notes that these laws
have the effect of inhibiting union organizing.
Investigations are vital to public debates about food production and
animal treatment. Especially during this time of uncertainty,
factory farms and slaughterhouses have been roiled by COVID-19.
Abusive working conditions and a lack of government intervention
have left more than 3,800 Iowa meatpacking plant workers infected
with the coronavirus and requiring many large facilities to
temporarily shut down. The bottleneck of animals created by these
slaughterhouse closures has led to “depopulation” of herds and
flocks — the mass killing of animals on farms — which has made
transparency and accountability more important than ever.
On May 29, 2020, a graphic video was released after a whistleblower
came forward in Iowa revealing the cruelty of depopulation and the
reality of ventilation shutdown, a common method of mass killing:
pigs calling out in distress as they were slowly cooked to death
with steam over the course of many hours. [Hidden
Video Reveals Gruesome Mass-Extermination Method for Iowa Pigs Amid
Pandemic] Without undercover investigations, such acts
of cruelty would be hidden from the public.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund, the nation’s preeminent legal
advocacy organization for animals, is one of the lead organizations
striking down Ag-Gag laws in Idaho, Utah, Iowa, North Carolina,
Arkansas, and Kansas, and most recently filed litigation seeking to
strike down Iowa’s most recent Ag-Gag law. Several of these cases
are ongoing, and coalitions are defending victories in federal
appellate courts, as well.
The plaintiff coalition is composed of the Animal Legal Defense
Fund, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the Center
for Food Safety, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, and
Bailing Out Benji. The coalition is represented by the ACLU of Iowa,
Public Justice, the Law Office of Matthew Strugar, Justin Marceau
and Alan Chen of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, and
in-house counsel for the plaintiff organizations.