Animal Law Digest

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear North Carolina's appeal concerning a law preventing undercover employees from recording at farms and workplaces. This ruling solidifies People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (PETA) legal win against the 2015 law. PETA's challenge, aimed at investigating university testing laboratories, found support from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that the law could not be applied to PETA and similar groups engaged in newsgathering activities. Advocates stressed the public's right to uncover illegal practices and highlighted the importance of exposing unsafe conditions.

The United States Supreme Court declined to hear North Carolina's appeal concerning a law preventing undercover employees from recording at farms and workplaces. This ruling solidifies People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (PETA) legal win against the 2015 law. PETA's challenge, aimed at investigating university testing laboratories, found support from the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals. The court ruled that the law could not be applied to PETA and similar groups engaged in newsgathering activities. Advocates stressed the public's right to uncover illegal practices and highlighted the importance of exposing unsafe conditions.

The U.S. Supreme Court denied petitions for writ of certiorari filed by the North Carolina Attorney General and the North Carolina Farm Bureau Federation. The parties sought review of a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling enjoining the state’s ag-gag law as applied to newsgathering operations by animal protection groups.

The Constitutional Council of Chile voted against an amendment proposing rodeo as the national sport, with seventeen votes opposing the change. Specifically, they rejected paragraph three of article thirteen, which established that “the national dance is the cueca and its national sport is the Chilean rodeo.” This amendment revolved around recognizing national symbols that celebrate Chilean identity, encompassing music, crafts, popular games, Creole sports, and the arts.

Turtle Island Foods SPC, the maker of Tofurky plant-based meat products, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas challenging a new state law that imposes restrictions on terminology used on plant-based and cultivated meat product labels. Turtle Island Foods brings its challenge under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, dormant Commerce Clause, Due Process Clause, and Supremacy Clause. The company claims that the Texas law imposes “an unreasonably burdensome and protectionist trade barrier that contravenes and is preempted by federal law and imposes vague standards” on plant-based producers, as well as “vague and unnecessary restrictions” on cultivated meat labeling. Turtle Island Foods is seeking declaratory judgment and permanent injunctive relief.

Several pieces of legislation under consideration in Colombia would ban almost all science and education using live animals. Following backlash from scientists, one bill introduced in the Chamber of Representatives was revoked, but a second bill and a constitutional amendment are still active in the Senate. The proposed legislation seeks to prohibit live animal use in academic and scientific research, toxicity tests, and related studies when alternative methods are available or when animals of higher zoological significance can be utilized. Furthermore, it imposes restrictions on undergraduate students, allowing animal interaction only during their last two university years under supervision. The likelihood of the bill passing remains unclear.

A Finnish citizens' initiative advocating for the inclusion of fundamental rights for animals in the national constitution has amassed the 50,000 signatures required to be debated by lawmakers in Parliament. The proposal seeks to establish comprehensive legislation safeguarding animals' fundamental rights, including those in the wild and under human care, while also prohibiting harmful breeding practices. Initiated by the Finnish Animal Rights Law Society, the campaign emphasizes animals' interests and needs in both public and private activities. Although animal protection is enshrined in the constitutions of countries like Germany and Brazil, Finland lacks such provisions. The initiative will be submitted to Parliament after the August 27th deadline.

Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seely entered a 103-page order finding that a group of sixteen young people in the state have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system” and that laws barring the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in the state’s permitting processes are unconstitutional. The ruling marks the conclusion of the first bench trial in a youth-led climate change lawsuit in the United States.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts entered an order granting a joint stipulation and motion to extend stay for six months in a case brought by the National Pork Producers Council and multiple restaurant and hospitality associations challenging Massachusetts Question 3, which prohibits the in-state sale of pork not compliant with the state’s animal confinement standards. According to the joint stipulation, the Massachusetts Department of Agricultural Resources will propose regulations to address “transshipped whole pork meat,” which is out-of-state pork “that enters and exits Massachusetts without additional processing or repackaging, exclusively for the purposes of transshipment or export outside of Massachusetts.” The parties to the joint stipulation requested a stay of those regulations for at least 60 days after their publication but for no longer than a year. The parties agreed that all other pork sales rules should go into effect on August 24, 2023, but that whole pork meat in the supply chain (post-slaughter) as of August 23, 2023, should not be subject to the pork sales rules.

Animal protection groups urged the U.S. Supreme Court to deny the petition for writ of certiorari filed by the North Carolina Attorney General and the North Carolina Farm Bureau seeking reinstatement of North Carolina’s Ag-Gag law. In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit partially enjoined North Carolina from applying the law, holding that undercover investigations “as part of newsgathering constitute[] protected speech.”