Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Reynolds

353 F. Supp. 3d 812
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Iowa
DecidedJanuary 9, 2019
Docket4:17-cv-00362–JEG-HCA
StatusPublished
Cited by5 cases

This text of 353 F. Supp. 3d 812 (Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Reynolds) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Reynolds, 353 F. Supp. 3d 812 (S.D. Iowa 2019).

Opinion

JAMES E. GRITZNER, Senior Judge

This matter is before the Court on cross-motions for summary judgment. Plaintiffs Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI), Bailing Out Benji, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. (PETA), and Center for Food Safety (CFS) (collectively, Plaintiffs), filed the first motion, ECF No. 49, which Defendants resist. Defendants Kimberly Reynolds, Tom Miller, and Bruce Swanson (collectively, Defendants), filed the second motion, ECF No. 57, which Plaintiffs resist. The parties agree that this matter is appropriate for resolution by summary judgment with each contending they are entitled to judgment as a matter of law. No party requested a hearing, and the Court finds a hearing unnecessary. The matter is fully submitted and ready for disposition.

I. BACKGROUND1

Iowa created the crime of "agricultural production facility fraud," Iowa Code § 717A.3A, in 2012, on the heels of several industrial farm investigations that brought critical national attention to Iowa's agricultural industry. For example, in 2011, an undercover investigation at Iowa Select Farms produced reports of workers hurling small piglets onto a concrete floor.2 Another investigation at Iowa's Sparboe Farms, documented reported mistreatment *817of hens and chicks.3 And yet another, conducted by PETA, exposed workers at a Hormel Foods supplier in Iowa "beating pigs with metal rods," "sticking clothespins into pigs' eyes and faces, and a supervisor kicking a young pig in the face, abdomen, and genitals to make her move while telling the investigator, 'You gotta beat on the bitch. Make her cry.' " Jeffrey S. Kerr Aff. ¶ 14, Pls.' App. 14, ECF No. 49-2. PETA's investigation, if not also the others, was an undercover, employment-based investigation in which the investigator also performed tasks assigned by the employer.

While the results of these investigations were being circulated by news media, the Iowa legislature considered H.F. 589, § 2 (Iowa 2012), which would eventually become § 717A.3A. Lawmakers described the bill as being responsive to two primary concerns of the agricultural industry: facility security (both in terms of biosecurity and security of private property) and harms that accompany investigative reporting.4 For example, as to security, then-Representative Annette Sweeney provided: "With this bill we want to make sure everybody involved in our livestock facilities and working within in those facilities is forthright, and want to make sure our livestock is being kept safe,"5 and then-Senate President John "Jack" Kibbie supported an early draft of the bill because "[t]here's viruses that can put these producers out of business, whether it's cattle, hogs or poultry."6 As to reputational harms, former Senator Tom Rielly commented on a draft version of the bill: "What we're aiming at is stopping these groups that go out and gin up campaigns that they use to raise money by trying to give the agriculture industry a bad name."7

The bill, signed into law on March 2, 2012, amended chapter 717A of the Iowa Code, which already prohibited disrupting, destroying, or damaging property at an animal facility, id. § 717A.2 (2003), or on crop operation property, id. § 717A.3 *818(2001), and also the use of pathogens to threaten animals and crops, id. § 717A.4 (2004). The new addition provides that a person commits "agricultural production facility fraud" if the person willfully:

a. Obtains access to an agricultural production facility by false pretenses[, or]
b. Makes a false statement or representation as part of an application or agreement to be employed at an agricultural production facility, if the person knows the statement to be false, and makes the statement with an intent to commit an act not authorized by the owner of the agricultural production facility, knowing that the act is not authorized.

Iowa Code § 717A.3A (2012). A first conviction under § 717A.3A is a serious misdemeanor, and a second or subsequent conviction is an aggravated misdemeanor. Id. § 717A.3A(2). A person can also be held criminally liable for conspiring to violate this statute, aiding and abetting a violation, or harboring, aiding, or concealing the person committing the violation, "with the intent to prevent the apprehension of the person." Id. § 717A.3A(3)(a). The law has the effect of criminalizing undercover investigations of certain agricultural facilities, including those mentioned above, and those of interest to the general public, such as puppy mills.8

Iowa Code § 717A.3A is similar, and in parts identical, to other states' laws that prohibit conduct and speech related to agricultural operations. In fact, Iowa is one of many states that have passed or attempted to pass such legislation in the last decade. See, e.g., Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Herbert, 263 F.Supp.3d 1193, 1196-98 (D. Utah 2017) (providing a brief history of similar proposed and enacted legislation across the country). Of those in effect, several have been invalidated or limited based on First Amendment challenges. See W. Watersheds Project v. Michael, No. 15-CV-169-SWS, 2018 WL 5318261, at *10 (D. Wyo. Oct. 29, 2018) (invalidating, in part, a Wyoming statute criminalizing entry on private land for the purpose of resource data collection relating to land use, including animal species, as facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment); Herbert, 263 F.Supp.3d at 1211-13 (finding a Utah law, very similar to Iowa's law, criminalizing acts of obtaining access to agricultural operations under false pretenses and recording images at such operations under false pretenses, to be facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment); Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Otter, 118 F.Supp.3d 1195, 1200-09 (D. Idaho 2015) (finding an Idaho law criminalizing interference with agricultural production facilities to be facially unconstitutional under the First Amendment), aff'd in part, rev'd in part sub nom. Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Wasden, 878 F.3d 1184 (9th Cir. 2018) (reversing as to the portion of the law related to offers of employment).

Plaintiffs and their amici

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Bluebook (online)
353 F. Supp. 3d 812, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/animal-legal-defense-fund-v-reynolds-iasd-2019.