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opinion contains seeds of victory for animal welfare movement

By Andrew Wood

Scott Ballenger [Partner, Latham & Watkins, LLP]: "The Supreme Court's decision [PDF file] in United States v. Stevens is remarkably narrow. The Court did not say that depictions of extreme animal cruelty are protected by the First Amendment. The Court's majority held only that the present federal depictions law was facially overbroad because it could be interpreted to ban hunting videos that had some redeeming social value. The majority did not even decide whether the statute was unconstitutional as applied to the dogfighting videos distributed by Mr. Stevens himself - merely that Stevens was entitled to benefit from the fact that the law would be unconstitutional as applied to hypothetical

Full post as published by JURIST - Hotline on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).