WASHINGTON, DC (July 24, 2009) – The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press today filed an Amicus Brief urging the United States Supreme Court to strike down a federal statute that criminalizes the possession, creation, or sale of a wide variety of depictions involving animals. The Reporters Committee filed the brief on behalf of itself and 13 media organizations.
The National Press Photographers Association joined RCFP in the filing.
The case, U.S. v. Stevens, involves a statute which makes it a felony to create, sell, or possess “a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain.” Congress passed the law in order to prohibit “crush videos," a type of fetish pornography involving the death of animals. But the reach of the law is far broader, and the government asked the Supreme Court to rule that depictions of animal cruelty are without value and thus entirely unprotected by the First Amendment. It also claimed that Congress may categorically ban any speech it wishes, as long as the government’s interest suppression outweighs the value of the speech.
"I am pleased that NPPA was able to join in the Amicus Brief asking the Supreme Court to to affirm the decision of the federal appeals court finding Section 48 unconstitutional on its face," NPPA's general counsel Mickey H. Osterreicher said Friday from Buffalo, NY.
"The law as written is overly broad. Some make the argument that preventing cruelty to animals is a "compelling governmental interest," a term of art used in deciding whether First Amendment protection attaches or fails. I believe that the free speech represented by such images is far more important. In this case it could be said that the road to eviscerating the Bill of Rights is paved with good intentions."
Though the press groups agreed that the “goal of preventing crush videos and other animal cruelty is certainly a worthy one,” they argued that it “is this very interest in protecting animals from abuse that makes speech about their treatment so valuable.” Media outlets “often expose the abuse of animals, participate in the national debate over the proper treatment of them, and cover commonplace activities involving animals such as hunting and fishing,” the brief said. But the law “compromises the news media’s ability to perform any of these functions without fear of prosecution.”
"Should the statute be held as constitutional it will have 'a chilling effect' upon photographers and journalists who create, sell and possess these images while they wait for the government to decide if those depictions have 'serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value," Osterreicher said. "This flies in the face of First Amendment principles which exist to protect the public and the press from such potentially arbitrary governmental determinations."
