After losing in court to animal rights and food safety groups who have argued the undercover videos are key to exposing poor business practices or wrongdoing, the state has agreed to pay their $885,000 legal bills. Groups that challenged the law said in a statement that North Carolina’s payment should serve as a serious warning to other states.
RACHEL WEINER: North Carolina spent eight years arguing that it was constitutional to ban employees from recording undercover video at work. After losing in court to animal rights and food safety groups who have argued the videos are key to exposing poor business practices or wrongdoing, the state has agreed to pay their $885,000 legal bills.
Other states have had to pay similar settlements over such “ag-gag laws,” pushed by the agricultural industry in response to exposés from inside factory farms. But the settlement in North Carolina is four or five times larger than others, reflecting a long legal battle that ended when the Supreme Court declined to take on the case last fall…
North Carolina’s law was different than ones struck down in other states, which state officials argued made it constitutional. The law that banned secret filming, though backed by the agriculture industry, covered all employers. And instead of making undercover filming a crime, it allowed companies to sue employees who did it. But a federal district judge and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit concluded that it was nevertheless an unconstitutional restriction of free expression… While businesses don’t have to let people engage in filming or other speech on their property, the court ruled, the government can’t step in and make that conduct illegal…
The case was litigated by attorneys from the nonprofit Public Justice, which has since spun off its agriculture-related work into a group called FarmStand. It was backed by animal rights groups as well as free-speech and media organizations… Groups that challenged the law said in a statement that North Carolina’s payment should “serve as a serious warning to other states.”
“Defend [the agriculture industry’s] interests to the detriment of the health, safety, and civil liberties of your citizens, and you’ll be choosing to do so at the taxpayers’ significant expense,” the statement from organizations that included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the Government Accountability Project and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: