WASHINGTON — Dealing a setback to animal-welfare advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down on free-speech grounds an anti-cruelty law that made it a federal crime to sell videos or photos of animals being illegally wounded, killed or tortured.
It marked the second time this year that the high court wielded the First Amendment to toss out a law with popular support.
The 8-1 ruling overturned the conviction of a Virginia man who sold several dog-fighting videos to federal agents.
All the states have laws against animal cruelty, but a decade ago, Congress adopted the new measure to stop the Internet trafficking in videos that showed tiny animals being tortured and crushed. Lawmakers said hunting would be unaffected because it is legal. Moreover, the ban on animal-cruelty photos included an exemption for those that had “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical or artistic value.”
The law was challenged as unconstitutional by media groups, which said it threatened freedom of speech.
The case arose when Robert Stevens, a promoter of pit bulls, was indicted and convicted for selling videos on his website that showed the dogs fighting each other or killing wild boar.
Government lawyers had defended the anti-cruelty law on the grounds that photos of animals being tortured, like pornography involving children, should be outside the protection of the First Amendment because the speech has little value and comes at a high cost to society.
Chief Justice John Roberts, speaking for the court, rejected as “startling and dangerous” the notion that the First Amendment protects only speech that is desirable or has social value.
“The First Amendment itself reflects a judgment by the American people that the benefits of its restrictions on the government outweigh the costs,” Roberts said.
He said the law was too broad and could allow for prosecutions for selling photos of out-of-season hunting.
Though enacted a decade ago, the law against animal-cruelty videos has been used rarely. It came under challenge recently when federal prosecutors turned it against the underground industry of dog fighting.
After Stevens was convicted of selling the dog-fighting videos, he appealed and argued the law was unconstitutional.
He won a preliminary ruling from a federal appeals court in Philadelphia last year, and the high court agreed Tuesday that the law must be voided.
“We do not decide,” Roberts said, “whether a statute limited to crush videos or other depictions of extreme animal cruelty would be unconstitutional,” he wrote in U.S. vs. Stevens.
Only Justice Samuel Alito dissented. He faulted the court for striking down “in its entirety a valuable statute that was enacted not to suppress speech, but to prevent horrific acts of animal cruelty — and in particular, the creation and commercial exploitation of ‘crush videos,’ a form of depraved entertainment that has no social value.”
Dan Pabon, lawyer for the Colorado Animal Welfare League, didn’t think First Amendment rights were the right measure for the high court to apply.
“The statute was not enacted to prevent speech but to prevent horrific acts of animal cruelty,” he said. “It’s unfortunate the Supreme Court used the First Amendment to interpret this statute. Fortunately, Congress is hard at work with a remedy, (because) these videos engender in society that animal cruelty is somehow OK.”
The Humane Society called the decision a disappointment, but its officials said they were heartened that the court left the door open for a new law that was more targeted at “crush videos” and dog fighting.
Denver Post staff writer Joey Bunch contributed to this report.
