Court strikes down Iowa's unconstitutional ag-gag law

"Ag-gag" laws -- which ban the collection of evidence of wrongdoing on farms, from animal cruelty to food-safety violations -- are a sterling example of how monopolism perpetuates itself by taking over the political process.

As American agribusiness has grown ever-more concentrated -- while antitrust regulators looked the other way, embracing the Reagan-era doctrine of only punishing monopolies for raising prices and permitting every other kind of monopolistic abuse -- it has been able to collude, joining industry groups like ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which drafts industry-favoring "model legislation" and then lobbies state legislatures to adopt it.

ALEC's contribution to Big Ag is the nationwide epidemic of "ag-gag" laws, which felonize the collection and disclosure of true facts of intense public interest. Ag-gag laws are plainly unconstitutional, but that hasn't stopped state authorities from prosecuting and imprisoning animal rights activists and food safety whistleblowers.

Invalidating ag-gag laws is an expensive, state-by-state process, and activists and impact litigators have already overturned the laws of Wyoming, Utah and Idaho, and fifteen other states, and now they've just scored a victory in Iowa, after a victory in a lawsuit filed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), Bailing Out Benji, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and the Center for Food Safety struck down the state's 2012 law.

The court took notice of the legislative history of the ag-gag law, which was passed after evidence of extreme animal cruelty was published by activists. Read the rest