Editor’s note: many articles were written about this back in 2015-16. It was one of the most serious attempts in Utah, Idaho or Wyoming commonly know as “ag-gag bills,” to make it very hard for public interest groups to collect data about possible illegal practices against consumers and the environment in the agricultural sector, especially as related to farm animals, workers in that area, and environmental impacts. In a breathtaking case of overreach, Wyoming actually tried to make it illegal to collect data on public land, even including photographs.
The case is now completely over.
. . . Ralph Maughan
Court Finds the state’s Ag-Gag Laws Violate Free Speech Rights and Blocks the Statutes Permanently
CHEYENNE, Wyo. – Wyoming’s controversial “Data Trespass” laws are unconstitutional and violate the First Amendment, a federal district court judge ruled on Monday. Before being overturned yesterday, the law criminalized the gathering of data on public land for the purposes of reporting illegal pollution or workplace safety violations, and to add steep civil penalties for data collection. The ruling strikes down the state laws and permanently blocks them from being applied.
“The ‘data trespass’ statutes were a blatant attempt by the Wyoming legislature to block data collection on public lands and take away the public’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and freedom of expression,” said Jonathan Ratner of Western Watersheds Project. “For years, Western Watersheds Project has collected scientific data showing that the majority of streams on federal public lands are contaminated by fecal bacteria from livestock, and the legislature clearly intended to suppress that information in order to protect the livestock industry from accountability under the Clean Water Act.”
The judge agreed that the laws chilled free speech by effectively banning investigations into potential violations of environmental laws. By threatening citizens with jail time and civil penalties and singling out for heightened punishment people legally collecting environmental data on public lands, the statutes deterred people from doing their part to hold polluters, employers and corporations accountable. Such investigations in the past have led to evidence of health code, environmental and labor violations, and have improved protections for land and wildlife. “There is simply no plausible reason for the specific curtailment of speech in the statutes beyond a clear attempt to punish individuals for engaging in protected speech that at least some find unpleasant,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
“This is a sweeping victory for the First Amendment, and a scathing rebuke of the industrial agriculture industry’s brazen attempt to hide the ways factory farms impact communities and the environment,” said David Muraskin, Food Project Attorney for Public Justice. “Wyoming’s attempt to silence and intimidate citizens, advocates and the media has now met the same demise as similar laws in Idaho and Utah, sending a clear message to industrial agriculture’s lobbyists that their dependence on secrecy to sell their product will not survive. These laws are unjust and unconstitutional, and we’ll continue to fight them from coast to coast until they have all been defeated or repealed.”
In 2018, the Wyoming legislature passed a statute that would have added additional penalties to people exercising their free speech rights by protesting at energy facilities, posing similar Constitutional infringements, but the law was vetoed by Governor Mead.
Ralph Maughan
Dr. Ralph Maughan is professor emeritus of political science at Idaho State University. He was a Western Watersheds Project Board Member off and on for many years, and was also its President for several years. For a long time he produced Ralph Maughan's Wolf Report. He was a founder of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. He and Jackie Johnson Maughan wrote three editions of "Hiking Idaho." He also wrote "Beyond the Tetons" and "Backpacking Wyoming's Teton and Washakie Wilderness." He created and is the administrator of The Wildlife News.
The AG-Gaga laws are one of the most heinous on the books, it is good to see some of these laws are being blocked at the Federal level. I am sure the issue will not stop, but it is a step. The current administrations attack on laws and protections for both domestic and wildlife is horrific and is setting us back decades.
Probably good to note/know:
“Everybody talks about finding middle ground as if the middle ground exists out there on its own,” he said. “But in the real world of politics, the middle ground is determined by the extremes.”
https://trib.com/business/energy/controversial-wyoming-agriculture-lawyer-joins-interior-department/article_8e851010-221c-52a1-9d45-c5a8f223628c.html
“The challenge to Wyoming’s data trespass laws, which are cousins of the so-called “Ag Gag” laws in at least eight other states, was brought by a coalition of non-profit organizations, including the Western Watersheds Project, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Press Photographers Association. Attorneys at Public Justice and NRDC represented the plaintiffs”
So glad our courts see still see things the way they should be!