No End In Sight For Big Agriculture’s Push To Criminalize Activists And Whistleblowers

Agribusiness and their corporate lobbyists have convinced a number of legislatures to pass bills criminalizing activists and whistleblowers, who dare to expose animal cruelty or malfeasance. The bills known as “ag-gag” laws explicitly target citizens’ First Amendment rights. But multiple states have seen strong legal action and efforts to fight such draconian legislation.

In what is described as a “first of its kind” report, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Defending Rights and Dissent detail the second wave of “ag-gag” laws passed from 2011 to 2017 in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming.

The report also offers a concise history of the first wave of “ag-gag” laws in the 1990s and how law enforcement, corporations, and politicians promoted the idea that industry was “under siege” by “eco-terrorists” or “animal rights extremists” by the late 1980s to advocate for bills that targeted individuals’ right to dissent.

As articulated in the report [PDF], “ag-gag” laws typically prohibit “documentation of agricultural practices,” “misrepresentations in job applications” to “gain access to closed facilities,” and require “immediate reporting of illegal animal cruelty” in order to curtail “investigations documenting widespread and systematic violence.”

Arkansas signed HB 1665 into law in March. The Humane Society of the United States warned it gave employers a “civil cause of action” against any “person who knowingly gains access to a non-public area of a commercial property and engages in an act that exceeds the person’s authority to enter the non-public area.”

Commercial property included agricultural or timber production operations. “Exceeding authority” meant anyone who placed an “unattended camera or electronic surveillance device to record images or data for an unlawful purpose,” along with capturing and removing any employer data, papers, or records.

“Since the purpose of whistleblowing is to expose malfeasance, it would be highly unusual for an employer to authorize an employee to record evidence of wrongdoing or misconduct,” the Humane Society warned . “Thus, nearly any whistleblower or activist who relies on undercover video footage would be ‘exceeding their authority.'”

The Humane Society noted the “ag-gag” law could feasibly be turned against those who seek to expose the “abuse of children at a daycare center,” given how it was worded. Arkansas lawmakers modeled their “ag-gag” law on legislation in North Carolina that passed in 2015. The law passed in the state represented a major escalation. According to the report, it essentially dropped the “ag” from “ag-gag” because just about any corporation could use it to protect industry. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) was one of a number of notable organizations to oppose the bill because it posed risks for “workers, older adults, families and children” since it could apply to “nursing homes, hospitals, group homes, medical practices, charter and private schools, daycare centers,” and other similar businesses.