In a decision this week, the United States Supreme Court declared a law unconstitutional which banned the making of "crush videos", a term I never heard before. Crush videos are videos which delibrately film animal torture, and which are subsequently sold to what I would consider a mentally ill audience. This type of video also includes "how to" programs to promote dog fights. The Court, rather than striking down part of the law, or remanding the original case back down to the lower court for more deliberation on the law's application to the facts, simply found the law overly board in violating First Amendment speech rights and found it unconstitutional.

To see their actual decision, go to
http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-769.pdf

The opinion is very long, but if you want to read what I think they should have done, read Justice Alito's lone dissent. His was the more reasoned approach as to how this case should have been handled.

At this point I am considering how to write to my Federal and State legislators, to see if there is some way this law can be re-written so it can survive a constitutional review, and put these animal cruelty video buffs out of business and in jail. Or perhaps there is some way to add the filming or taping of acts of animal cruelty to my local state law, making sure the penalties for this "type" of animal cruelty
includes jail time and heavy fines.

Sorry for the very long post, but I really needed to vent after reading about this.

I hate animal cruelty as much as the next person, BUT I will not condemn their right to present videos of such. Much like those who call pictures of Christ with feces smeared across Him "art", if we begin to deny those with whom we disagree the "rights" that we all enjoy, soon those same rights will be denied to all!

Be careful what you wish for!

I don't know why they can't make it similar to the child pornography laws. The victims can not consent to the activity and are abused for "entertainment."

You also have to consider the jump from animal abuse and human abuse. With such a strong link why give anyone a way to promote such cruelty?

They did not sanction animal cruelty. If you read the decision, you would see that. What they did was overturn a law that was too broad in scope. Such that law abiding citizens could be made criminals because they made a video of hunting and hunting dogs.

What they did ask is that the Congress make a law that was not so broad as to be hardly enforceable. So now it is up to Congress to fulfill that request.

We as dog owners and breeders should take up the mantel on this before PETA and HSUS overtake the law making process in Congress.

I did read the entire decision, including the dissent portion of the opinion written by Justice Alito. He specifically pointed out in his portion of the opinion, that when the law was passed, all the legislators supporting the legislation agreed that this law WOULD NOT apply to films made about hunting or hunting practices. That this was the agreed to was shown in the comments made in the legislative history leading up to this statute's passage. That was one of the main points of Alito's Dissent.

His other point was that the Supreme Court over reached in abolishing the law, before seeing if the decision could be remanded back to the Appellate Division to see if they could do a "better job" of applying the law to the facts, to see if they could sufficiently limit the law's application to the specific facts of the case, so that it was not constitutionally over-reaching.

If this was strictly a matter of "art" being in the eye of the beholder, that would be fine. But as Alito pointed out, the activities being filmed are illegal in every State of the Union, except cock fighting in Puerto Rico. The basis of these films are not that they are simulated animal cruetly or faked animal cruelty for the camera, but ACTUAL acts of animal cruelty being done for the camera, to be re-sold for that mentally ill audience I referred in my first post.

In my state, people found viewing a dog fight, are guilty of a crime. People who set up dog fight matches are guilty of a crime. If this is true, what makes people who set up animals to be abused for the viewing pleasure of some sick individuals, either in person, or by way of a recording, innocent? And that is what this law was aimed at.