{"id":760751,"date":"2020-06-16T07:03:29","date_gmt":"2020-06-16T11:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760751"},"modified":"2020-06-16T07:03:47","modified_gmt":"2020-06-16T11:03:47","slug":"north-carolinas-ag-gag-law-ruled-unconstitutional-by-federal-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=760751","title":{"rendered":"North Carolina&#8217;s Ag-Gag Law Ruled Unconstitutional by U.S. Federal Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>The federal district court judge noted that the Ag-Gag law didn\u2019t just ban undercover animal rights videos, but also banned other activities, such as the reporting of crimes.<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>WILL DORAN:<\/strong> A North Carolina law passed in 2015 in an attempt to stop animal-rights activists from posing as farm workers to secretly document conditions on farms has been ruled unconstitutional. The law, called an \u201cag-gag law\u201d by critics, didn\u2019t just deal with activists who went undercover as farm workers as part of efforts to expose animal abuse. It also created broader concerns \u2014 including that it would let people get away with committing crimes at work, or that it would stop journalists from holding powerful people and companies accountable.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The law allowed allowed any business \u2014 not limited to farms \u2014 to sue employees who recorded meetings or publicized internal documents. More than 20 media organizations, including companies like the now-merged Gannett and GateHouse chains that own many newspapers across North Carolina, filed a legal brief calling for the law to be overturned.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\u201cIf whistleblowers (and other would-be sources) are punished for documenting evidence of dangerous, illegal, or unethical activity that they encounter, journalists will not be able to do their jobs effectively,\u201d their brief said.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The groups that led the lawsuit included People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, or the ALDF. Both said they have done undercover animal rights videos in the past in North Carolina, and had plans to do more, but had to stop because of this law.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The federal district court judge who ruled in their favor, Thomas Schroeder, noted their argument that the law didn\u2019t just ban such undercover animal rights videos but also banned other activities, \u201csuch as the reporting of crimes. They further argue that there is a realistic danger that the Act will compromise the First Amendment rights of parties not before the court.\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsobserver.com\/news\/politics-government\/article243547507.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong> SOURCE&#8230;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/OoHqY_3RhAk\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WILL DORAN: A North Carolina law passed in 2015 in an attempt to stop animal-rights activists from posing as farm workers to secretly document conditions on farms has been ruled unconstitutional. The law, called an \u201cag-gag law\u201d by critics, didn\u2019t just deal with activists who went undercover as farm workers as part of efforts to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":760752,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,18,20,23,25],"tags":[27,30,31,35],"class_list":["post-760751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-justice","category-rights","category-welfare","tag-cruelty","tag-exploitation","tag-farming","tag-protection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=760751"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760754,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760751\/revisions\/760754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/760752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=760751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=760751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=760751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}