Wyoming court rules controversial ag-gag law violates free speech
It's a victory for green groups and free speech.
KYLA MANDEL
OCT 30, 2018, 2:21 PM
In a victory for environmentalists, a Wyoming court has found that a controversial trespass law violates the right to free speech.
The state’s district court ruled Monday that Senate File 12, better known as the Data Trespass Law, is unconstitutional because it is “in violation of the First Amendment.” The law made it illegal for anyone to collect data on public or private open land — data often required by groups monitoring pollution from cattle grazing and other agricultural practices.
Critics of the law argued that it would silence whistle-blowers who expose public land management issues, particularly malpractice within the agriculture industry. The law, they said, would make it illegal for citizen scientists or concerned residents to expose contamination of streams by the ranching industry — which represents a significant share of the state’s economy. In 2015, a coalition of environmental, justice, and animal rights groups filed a lawsuit against the Data Trespass Law in federal court.
The law has been compared to other “ag-gag” laws in states such as Idaho or Utah, which specifically targeted undercover investigations of slaughterhouses. (These laws have also been successfully challenged in court.) Wyoming, however, was the first to introduce a more generalized version of an ag-gag law that didn’t have language directed specifically at factory farming. The state instead argues that the law was designed to grant more rights to property owners against trespassers.
https://thinkprogress.org/wyoming-court-strikes-down-law-forbidding-people-from-documenting-pollution-on-public-lands-f5cbd72b4ee2/
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