In their rush to protect farmers from adverse publicity, Idaho legislators enacted an unconstitutional, “staggeringly overbroad” muzzle of free speech and investigative reporting, ruled U.S. appeals court judges in Seattle. The three-judge panel overturned portions of the Idaho “ag gag” law that barred undercover audio and video recording at farms as well as misrepresentations made by people looking to gain entry to farms.
Idaho was among 10 states — Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota, and Utah are the others — that criminalized undercover employment on farms and at packing plants. The laws were a response to a splashy tactic employed by animal rights activists of surreptitiously recording purported livestock abuse and then making the material public.
A federal judge previously ruled the Utah law unconstitutional, and the state decided last September not to appeal the decision. In October, in the most ambitious challenge to ag gag legislation, a coalition of consumer, free speech, and animal rights groups filed suit in federal court in Des Moines, seeking to overturn the restrictions in Iowa, the No. 1 state for hog and egg production.
The Animal Legal Defense Fund, which was part of a suit against the Idaho law in 2014, said the appellate decision “sends a strong message to Idaho and other states with ag gag laws that they cannot trample civil liberties for the benefit of an industry.” The ALDF is a plaintiff in ag gag cases in Iowa and North Carolina.
Idaho lawmakers passed the law after dairy farmers complained that secret filming of workers on a southern Idaho dairy farm unfairly hurt their business. The federal court ruling in 2015 that declared the law unconstitutional was the first court decision against such laws. The ALDF said had Idaho scored another first, by being the first state to lose at the appellate level.
In a summary of its ruling, the appeals court said the ban on recordings “regulated speech protected by the First Amendment and was a classic example of a content-based restriction that could not survive strict scrutiny.” The prohibition on personal misrepresentation to gain entry to facilities “criminalized innocent behavior, was staggeringly overbroad and … was, in large part, targeted at speech and investigative journalists.” Still, the judges upheld portions of the law against making misrepresentations to obtain farm records or to gain employment with the intent of causing economic or other injury to the employer.
A spokesman for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said the state was reviewing the decision, reported Reuters. The news agency said the ALDF was reviewing its options on the portions of the law that were deemed constitutional.
To read the appellate court decision, click here.