Is There a Constitutional Way To Protect Animal Ag Facilities?

Overview

In response to attempts by activist groups opposed to animal agriculture, legislatures in several states have enacted laws designed to protect specified livestock facilities from certain types of interference.  Some of the laws have been challenged on free speech and equal protection grounds with a few courts issuing opinions that have largely found the laws constitutional suspect.  However, last week’s opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit construing the Idaho provision provides a roadmap for lawmakers to follow when crafting similar statutes to protect livestock facilities that will survive constitutional scrutiny.

I asked my research assistant, Washburn law student Melissa Miller, to dig into the Ninth Circuit’s opinion for me so that I could wrap her insight from that case into a broader piece for today’s post.  Today’s post includes some of her thoughts.

General Statutory Construct

The basic idea of state legislatures that have attempted to provide a level of protection to livestock facilities is to bar access to an animal production facility under false pretenses.  At their core, the laws attempt to prohibit a person having the intent to harm a livestock production facility from gaining access to the facility (such as via employment) to then commit illegal acts on the premises.  See, e.g., Iowa Code §717A.3A. (a legal challenge to the Iowa law was filed in late 2017).  Laws that bar lying and trespass coupled with the intent to do physical harm to an animal production facility likely are not constitutionally deficient.  Laws that go beyond those confines may be. 

Recent Court Opinions

Recently, a challenge to the North Carolina statutory provision was dismissed for lack of standing.  The plaintiffs in the case, numerous animal rights activist groups, brought a pre-enforcement challenge to the North Carolina Property Protection Act (Act). The Act creates a civil cause of action for a North Carolina employer against an employee who “captures or removes” documents from the employer’s premises or records images or sound on the employer’s premises and uses the documents or recordings to breach the employee’s duty of loyalty to the employer. The plaintiffs claimed that the Act unconstitutionally stifled their ability to investigate North Carolina employers for illegal or unethical conduct and restricted the flow of information those investigations provide.  The court dismissed the case for lack of standing. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Stein, 259 F. Supp. 3d 369 (M.D. N.C. 2017).

The Utah law, however, was deemed unconstitutional.  At issue was Utah Code §76-6-112 (Act) which criminalizes the entering of a private agricultural livestock facility under false pretenses or via trespass to photograph, audiotape or videotape practices inside the facility.  Anti-livestock activist groups sued on behalf of the citizen-activist claiming that the Act amounted to an unconstitutional restriction on speech in violation of the First Amendment. While the state claimed that lying, which the statute regulates, is not protected free speech, the court determined that only lying that causes “legally cognizable harm” falls outside First Amendment protection. The state also argued that the act of recording is not speech that is protected by the First Amendment. However, the court determined that the act of recording is protectable First Amendment speech. The court also concluded that the fact that the speech occurred on a private agricultural facility did not render it outside First Amendment protection. The court determined that both the lying and the recording provisions of the Act were content-based provisions subject to strict scrutiny. To survive strict scrutiny the state had to demonstrate that the restriction furthered a compelling state interest. The court determined that “the state has provided no evidence that animal and employee safety were the actual reasons for enacting the Act, nor that animal and employee safety are endangered by those targeted by the Act, nor that the Act would actually do anything to remedy those dangers to the extent that they exist.”  For those reasons, the court determined that the Act was unconstitutional. Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Herbert, 263 F. Supp. 3d 1193 (D. Utah 2017).

A Wyoming law experienced a similar fate.  In 2015, two new Wyoming laws went into effect that imposed civil and criminal liability upon any person who "[c]rosses private land to access adjacent or proximate land where he collects resource data." Wyo. Stat. §§6-3-414(c); 40-27-101(c). The appellate court, reversing the trial court, determined that because of the broad definitions provided in the statutes, the phrase "collects resource data" included numerous activities on public lands (such as writing notes on habitat conditions, photographing wildlife, or taking water samples), so long as an individual also records the location from which the data was collected. Accordingly, the court held that the statutes regulated protected speech in spite of the fact that they also governed access to private property. While trespassing is not protected by the First Amendment, the court determined that the statutes targeted the “creation” of speech by penalizing the collection of resource data. Western Watersheds Project v. Michael, 869 F.3d 1189 (10th Cir. 2017), rev’g., 196 F. Supp. 3d 1231 (D. Wyo. 2016).

The Idaho Statute and the Courts

In 2012, an animal rights activist went undercover to get a job at an Idaho dairy farm then secretly filmed ongoing animal abuse there. The video was then given to Mercy for Animals, an animal rights group, that publicly released portions of the video, drawing national attention. The dairy farm owner responded to the video by firing the employees who were caught on camera, instituting operational protocols, and conducting an animal welfare audit at the farm. Following the release of the video, the Idaho Legislature responded by enacting the Interference with Agricultural Production Law, Idaho Code § 18-7042. The legislation broadly criminalizes making misrepresentations to access an agricultural production facility as well as making audio and video recordings of the facility without the owner’s consent. Specifically, Idaho Code Sec. 18-7042(1)(d)) criminalizes "interference with agricultural production" when a person knowingly enters an ag production facility without permission or without a court order or without otherwise having the right to do so by statute (in other words, the person is on the premises illegally), and makes a video or audio recording of how the ag operation is conducted.

In March of 2014, The Animal League Defense Fund (ALDF) sued challenging the constitutionality of the law. The complaint alleged that the purpose and effect of the statute “are to stifle political debate about modern agriculture by criminalizing all employment-based undercover investigations and criminalizing investigative journalism, whistleblowing by employees, or other expository efforts that entail images or sounds” in violation of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The district court determined that four subsections of the statute—§18-7042(1)(a)-(d)—were unconstitutional on First Amendment and Equal Protection Grounds.

On appeal, the Ninth Circuit partially reversed parts of the trial court’s ruling, thereby upholding parts of the law. Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Wasden, No. 15-35960, 2018 U.S. App. LEXIS 241 (9th Cir. Jan. 4, 2018).  The appellate court analyzed the statute, subsection-by-subsection.

Subsection (a).  Subsection (a) criminalizes entry into an agricultural production facility “by force, threat, misrepresentation or trespass.” The ALDF challenged only the misrepresentation prong of this subsection as unconstitutional and the appellate court agreed that it was unconstitutional, affirming the trial court.  The appellate court determined that, unlike lying to obtain records or gain employment (which are associated with a material benefit to the speaker), lying to gain entry merely allowed the speaker to cross the threshold of another’s property, including property that is generally open to the public. Thus, the appellate court determined that the provision was overbroad and could potentially criminalize behavior that, by itself, was innocent, and was targeted at speech and investigative journalists. The court stated that it saw no reason why the state could not narrow the subsection by requiring specific intent or by limiting criminal liability to statements that cause particular harm. The court also held that an easy solution to the First Amendment issue would be to simply strike the word “misrepresentation.”

Subsection (b).  Subsection (b) criminalizes obtaining records of an agricultural production facility by misrepresentation.  Unlike the trial court, the appellate court upheld this subsection on the basis that it protects against a legally cognizable harm associated with a false statement.  The court determined that unlike false statements made to enter property, false statements made to actually acquire agricultural production facility records inflict a property harm upon the owner, and may also bestow a material gain on the acquirer.

Subsection (c).  The appellate court also reversed the trial court’s finding of unconstitutionality with respect to subsection (c).  This subsection criminalizes knowingly obtaining employment with an agricultural production facility by misrepresentation with the intent to cause economic or other injury to the facility’s operations, property or personnel. The appellate court determined that subsection (c) properly followed U.S. Supreme Court guidance as to what constitutes a lie made for material gain. This was particularly the case, the appellate court noted, because subsection (c) limits criminal liability to only those who gain employment by misrepresentation and who have the intent to cause economic or other injury which further limits the scope of the subsection.

Subsection (d).  This subsection bars a person from entering a private agricultural production facility and, without express consent from the facility owner, making audio or video recordings of the “conduct of an agricultural production facility’s operations.” The appellate court determined that because the recording process is itself expressive and is inextricably intertwined with the resulting recording, the creation of audiovisual recordings is speech entitled to First Amendment protection as purely expressive activity. In addition, the appellate court concluded that the subsection was both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. It was under-inclusive by prohibiting audio or video recordings but saying nothing about photographs. It was over-inclusive and suppressed more speech than necessary to further Idaho’s stated goals of protecting property and privacy. Accordingly, the appellate court agreed with the trial court that subsection (d) was unconstitutionally defective.   

Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit’s opinion provides a roadmap for state lawmakers to follow to provide at least a minimal level of protection to animal production facilities from those that would intend to do them economic harm.  Barring entry to a facility by force, threat or trespass is allowed.  Likewise, the acquisition of economic data by misrepresentation can be prohibited.  Similarly, criminalizing the obtaining of employment by false pretenses coupled with the intent to cause harm to the animal production facility is not constitutionally deficient.  However, provisions that criminalize audiovisual recordings likely will not stand.  That conclusion shouldn’t trouble animal production facilities – if they are operating properly there is nothing to hide.