Animals and the US Constitution – the First Amendment

David B. Rosengard

Chapter 10 in Elgar Concise Encyclopedia of Animal Law, 2025, pp 37-40 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: First Amendment jurisprudence regarding speech and religious freedoms is not only relevant to the practice of animal law but has itself been significantly impacted by animal law cases. First Amendment religious freedoms require the government to treat religiously-motivated treatment of animals in the same manner as equivalent secularly-motivated treatment. Religious freedom arguments are also available to individuals with pro-animal religious beliefs—for example, prisoners seeking vegan meals. Depictions of violence against animals are not excluded from free speech protection but are susceptible to criminalization when they constitute unprotected speech on independent grounds—for example, content that is both violent (protected speech) and obscene (unprotected speech). Speech freedoms also limit the state's ability to pass laws insulating animal industries and hunting from inquiry and investigation. Similarly, the First Amendment limits the government's ability to restrict the manner in which plant-based or cell-cultured products label and advertise themselves.

Keywords: Crush videos; Animal sacrifice; Ag-gag; Hunter-harassment; First Amendment; Speech; Religion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781803923666
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803923673.00017 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 403 Forbidden

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21587_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().