A Victory for Freedom of Speech?

The lead article in today’s New York Times, titled “Justices Reject Ban on Depicting Animal Cruelty,” describes a ruling by the Supreme Court declaring that videos showing dogfights between pit bulls are protected by the First Amendment. With the other recent ruling supporting the free speech rights of corporations, roundly denounced by the Obama administration, this action shows a strong First Amendment philosophy by the court.

Even though dogfighting and animal cruelty is illegal in all 50 states, the videos by Robert Stevens showed the event occurring in Jamaica. And the court applied the following rule to this situation: only if the market for the speech is “intrinsically related to the underlying abuse” can it be declared unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court, in its ruling, declined to create a new category of speech unprotected by the First Amendment. The current categories lacking First Amendment protection are obscenity, defamation, fraud, incitement and speech integral to criminal conduct. Because of the “intrinsic” rule described above, dogfighting videos are not covered under the latter category.

The only dissenting justice in the 8-1 ruling was Samuel Alito who disagreed about the application of the intrinsic rule and felt the videos should be included.

The Humane Society called for Congress to draft new legislation to cover dogfighting videos that would pass Constitutional muster. This seems like a wise course of action.