US Supreme Court backs PETA’s challenge to North Carolina state law
US Supreme Court backs PETA’s challenge to North Carolina state law
Robert Besser
20 Oct 2023, 02:21 GMT+10
- The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear North Carolina’s defense of a state law aimed at preventing hidden-camera investigations by PETA and other animal rights groups from damaging local farms and other businesses
- The lower court sidestepped deciding the law’s validity in certain non-news gathering contexts
- PETA said it conducts undercover investigations to expose the abuse of animals in laboratories, farms and slaughterhouses, the pet trade, clothing industry and other areas
RALEIGH, North Carolina: This week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear North Carolina’s defense of a state law aimed at preventing hidden-camera investigations by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and other animal rights groups from damaging local farms and other businesses.
The justices turned away appeals by North Carolina’s Democratic Attorney-General Josh Stein and a trade association representing North Carolina farmers of a lower court’s ruling that the 2015 law violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech when enforced against “news gathering activities.”
The law allows a business or property owner to sue “double-agent” workers who make secret recordings or remove documents from non-public areas and use the information to “breach the person’s duty of loyalty to the employer,” to recover monetary damages for the violations.
The lower court sidestepped deciding the law’s validity in certain non-news gathering contexts.
PETA said it conducts undercover investigations to expose the abuse of animals in laboratories, farms and slaughterhouses, the pet trade, clothing industry and other areas.
It was planning to conduct an undercover investigation of animal testing labs at the University of North Carolina but feared the threat of monetary damages from the state’s “ag-gag” law aimed at restraining animal rights activists, PETA said.
The animal rights group lauded Monday’s decision to reject the appeals, and its General Counsel for Animal Law Jared Goodman said, “Ag-gag laws are a desperate, last-ditch attempt by animal exploiters to smother free speech and hide appalling cruelty to animals from a public that is increasingly disinclined to tolerate it.”
In response to the decision, Stein’s office said it was reviewing it.
In 2016, PETA, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and several other organizations sued to block the law’s enforcement, claiming that it targets the free speech of whistleblowers.
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