Court Rules 'Ag-Gag' Law Criminalizing Undercover Reporting Violates the First Amendment

[mucifer]

In a win for freedom of the press, a federal court this month struck down an Iowa law making it a crime to lie about your intentions when accessing an agricultural production facility.

The “ag-gag” law, which was aimed at undercover journalists and activists, essentially prevented undercover investigations of the agricultural industry. The court rightly found that the law violates the First Amendment.

This welcome ruling joins a host of other court decisions finding similar laws in other states to be unconstitutional — and for good reason. Undercover reporting is a critical tool to inform the public about corporate wrongdoing. Overbroad laws criminalizing false speech violate the First Amendment and prevent investigative journalism from holding powerful private actors to account.

https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/freedom-press/court-rules-ag-gag-law-criminalizing-undercover-reporting-violates?redirect=blog/free-speech/court-rules-ag-gag-law-criminalizing-undercover-reporting-violates-first-amendment

and a nice link here for the heroic investigators at Mercy for Animals!
https://mercyforanimals.org/investigations

[shanny]

1. 'bout time

the alar "scare" was almost 30 years ago and it sparked a bunch of these laws

[underpants]

2. Good

[hunter]

3. There's a lot of inhumanity in the factory farm meat and dairy industries.

It needs to stop, not just for the animals, but for the humans who end up working in these terrible places.

I'm not entirely vegetarian, my family heritage is ranching, dairy, hunting, and fishing.

I'm mostly vegetarian because it reduces my environmental footprint and I don't believe factory farm meat or dairy products are any kind of necessity.

If my parents serve fish my dad caught I'll eat it.

If a relative serves sausage made from an animal they shot, I'll eat that.

But I don't have any insatiable desires for factory farm bacon, canned tuna, milk by the gallon, roasted chickens, ground beef, or any other inexpensive meat and dairy horrors of the modern supermarket.

I don't eat meat most days, my wife never does.

Our hypocrisy is our dogs, all of them animal shelter adoptions, dogs of the difficult sort. I don't expect them to be vegetarian. But I do think about where their food comes from.

Spay and neuter your pets. Promote birth control for people too. There are too many of us.