Animal Cruelty Laws

Animal Cruelty Law in the United States

Every state has a law against animal cruelty. But what's surprising is the degree to which the states differ in their prohibition of cruelty. While some states have strong felony-level penalties, others still categorize egregious acts of intentional cruelty, such as setting an animal on fire or maliciously beating an animal, as misdemeanors or felonies with relatively weak penalties.

As of July 2008, 45 states have enacted felony-level penalties for certain acts of animal cruelty, 31 of them in the last ten years. Some states have relatively effective laws that do not contain felony-level penalties, and not all states with felony-level provisions have otherwise strong laws. While the majority of states cover all animals, several restrict felony-level penalties to crimes against zoo or companion animals.

A good felony anti-cruelty law should:

• Apply to all animals.
• Apply to first-time offenders.
• Have large fines and lengthy prison time as penalties.
• Have no exemptions.
• Allow or require convicted abusers to get counseling at their own expense.
• Prohibit abusers from possessing animals or living where animals are present.

Additionally, statutes should be combined with a strong commitment to enforce the law. Police, psychologists and even the FBI recognize the link between animal cruelty and acts of violence toward people. To better protect communities, all states should have strong penalties and should work to educate and increase community awareness of the significance of animal cruelty crimes.

More...

Animal Cruelty Laws: Where Does Your State Stand? | The Humane Society of the United States


Animal Welfare Act

The Animal Welfare Act is the Federal Law which provides regulations for research facilities, state and private run shelters and pounds, transportation of animals, and stolen animals. It was originally passed in 1966 and has been amended multiple times through 1996. One of the more interesting statutes, for our discussion, is that any state or private run shelter is required to hold an dog or cat for at least 5 days including a weekend day for recovery by the owner or adoption before selling it to a dealer (PUBLIC LAW 101-624, Sec. 28.a.1). For summaries and the full text of the Animal Welfare Act and Amendments, visit: http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/legislat/usdaleg1.htm


Animal Cruelty Laws State By State

To view a summary of the state’s animal cruelty law and for a link to the text of the law itself, please click the link below and follow the instructions:

www.straypetadvocacy.org



How to Update Wiki

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[forum_admin]

• U.S. justices question animal cruelty video law
• Law, aimed at videos, said to violate free-speech rights
• U.S. Supreme Court weighs free speech in dog fighting case

U.S. Supreme Court weighs free speech in dog fighting case


A U.S. law that makes it a crime to sell videos of animals being tortured or killed may be too broad as it possibly covers documentary films and depictions of hunting or bullfights, Supreme Court justices said on Tuesday.

A majority of the nine-member high court seemed sympathetic to the argument that the 1999 animal cruelty law infringed on free-speech protections guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Congress adopted the law in an attempt to stop people from profiting by the interstate sale of depictions of torture and killing of animals. It mainly was aimed at videos in which women in high-heeled shoes crush small animals as a type of sexual fetish.

Opponents of the law argued that its reach was too wide, making videos of blood sports and even documentaries illegal.

[sandra]

"It's not up to the government to tell us what are our worst instincts," Scalia said.

Justices ponder the possibility of a 'Human Sacrifice Channel' in a case involving a man who sold videos of pit bulls fighting. Some fear reviving a law against such films could lead to its misuse.

Could the government outlaw a hypothetical "Human Sacrifice Channel" on cable TV?

That question became the focus of a Supreme Court argument Tuesday on the reach of the 1st Amendment and whether Congress can outlaw videos showing dogs fighting or other small animals being tortured and killed.

On Tuesday, most of the justices sounded wary of reviving the law, fearing it might be used to ban depictions of legal activities such as hunting.

Justice Antonin Scalia, an avid hunter, insisted the 1st Amendment does not allow the government to limit speech and expression, unless it involves sex or obscenity.

"It's not up to the government to tell us what are our worst instincts," Scalia said.



What do you think?

[WSJ_law_blog]

It takes a special kind of Supreme Court argument to get Justice Alito riffing about a hypothetical television channel devoted to human torture. But that’s exactly what we had on Wednesday during a spirited argument about the constitutionality of a federal law banning depictions of cruelty to animals.

The Journal’s Supreme Court correspondent, Jess Bravin, is all over this case. For starters, check out his video (left), which gives a nice exposition of the case. If prose is your thing, click here to read his story in today’s WSJ.

The 1999 law at issue in the case was inspired by congressional revulsion at “crush” videos, where barefoot or stiletto-heeled women crush small animals to death. The statute’s text criminalizes more than fetish movies, outlawing any visual or sound recording “in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed,” if doing so would be illegal in the place the depiction was made, sold or possessed.

According to Bravin, the majority of justices on the Supreme Court expressed constitutional concerns about the law. Justice Scalia, for instance, repeatedly criticized the government’s effort to liken animal cruelty videos to child pornography — which, like other forms of obscenity, receives no First Amendment protections under earlier court decisions.

“This is something quite different,” said Scalia. Hunting and other practices that wound or kill animals, sometimes painfully, are neither prurient nor, in some places, illegal, Justice Scalia observed.

“What if I am an aficionado of bullfights and I think, contrary to the animal cruelty people, that they ennoble both beast and man,” Justice Scalia said. “I would not be able to market videos showing people how exciting a bullfight is.”

In their questions, Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor also seemed troubled by the animal cruelty law, pointing out what they thought were its inconsistencies or vagueness.

But Justice Alito, in his questions, suggested he was at least weighing a contrary view, suggesting that the government could suppress depiction of repugnant or barbaric activities.

“Suppose I am an aficionado of the sort of gladiatorial contests that used to take place in ancient Rome . . . where the gladiators fight to the death,” he said. “Do you have any doubt that that could be prohibited?”

What if human sacrifices were legal in a foreign land, Justice Alito said. “People here would probably love to see it. Live, pay per view, you know, on the Human Sacrifice Channel.”

Or, he said, “suppose you have the Ethnic Cleansing Channel on cable TV,” depicting crimes against humanity overseas. “Congress couldn’t prohibit that?”

In the only successful prosecution under the law, a Virginia man, Robert Stevens, was convicted for compiling and selling dog-fighting videos. A federal appeals court in Philadelphia struck down the law, and the Justice Department appealed to the Supreme Court.

[forum_admin]

The U.S. Supreme Court appeared poised Tuesday to strike down a federal law that makes it a crime to sell depictions of animal cruelty because the law sweeps too broadly and violates free-speech rights.

Just because a channel is “disgusting, despicable,” Patricia Millett* said, “doesn’t mean that we automatically ban it.”

One by one yesterday, Supreme Court justices across the political spectrum registered their First Amendment concerns about a 1999 federal law that makes it a crime to make, possess or sell depictions of animal cruelty — except those with scientific, journalistic, religious or political value.

The Court was hearing argument in United States v. Stevens, a challenge to the law brought by Robert Stevens, who was prosecuted for making dogfighting videos — even though he claimed they were documentaries that did not foster or endorse illegal dogfighting.


* Patricia Ann Millett (born c. 1963) is a Washington, D.C. attorney who has argued more cases before the United States Supreme Court than all but one other woman in private legal practice today. She currently co-heads the Supreme Court practice at the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld.

There are ways to curb speech abuses without getting into the banning game--that is a slippery slope...

Under the First Amendment, Americans are free to disagree about the value of dogfight videos, and we are also free to disagree about how our disagreements should be expressed. The core of that freedom rests on a simple difference between illegal dogfights on the one hand and constitutionally protected speech about dogfights on the other.