Animal Cruelty and Free Speech
The First Amendment protects even disturbing speech, a point the Supreme Court should keep in mind on Tuesday when it hears arguments in the case of a man convicted of selling videos of dogfighting and other animal cruelty. A federal appeals court reversed his conviction, ruling that the federal law under which he was prosecuted is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court should uphold that well-reasoned decision. Robert Stevens, who ran a business called “Dogs of Velvet and Steel,” sold videos of pit bulls engaging in dogfights and attacking other animals. He did not participate in the attacks personally, but he was charged under a federal law that makes it illegal to sell depictions of acts of animal cruelty that are themselves illegal in the state where the depiction is sold.
The NY Times editorial argues that, despite the ethical problems of videos depicting animal cruelty, it should nevertheless be legal as a form of freedom of expression. It argues that like other forms of speech which are vile, such as racism, these animal cruelty videos should nevertheless be a legitimate form of expression. This is one of those times that I am going to disagree with the NYT editorial. I believe that freedom of speech should offer no protection for videos which clearly depict animal cruelty for exploitation. There are clear barriers when it comes to freedom of speech. Child pornography or films depicting people being killed, for example would qualify as clear examples where freedom of speech cannot be used as a protective shield. Whilst animal cruelty seems to belong to that grey area, I think that it should be clear that such videos should not be tolerated. Naturally this will create some difficult grey areas. For example, if Discovery Channel were to show a video of a Lion mauling its prey, would that count as animal cruelty? Or if some animals were killed in the production of a film, would that suffice? That is the dangers of outright banning such videos and there may well be a grey area involved. However, there are clear-cut videos of animal cruelty and in the obvious cases, we should have no qualms about taking a strong stance against it.
