Facts
Robert J. Stevens operated a business, “Dogs of Velvet and Steel,” that advertised and sold dog-related videos and merchandises that portrayed animal cruelty. During the inquisition, law enforcement officials bought three videos from Stevens. In the first two videotapes, there were footages of pit bulls engaged in dogfighting, and the third videotape showed trained pit bulls attacking wild boar as part of the dog being trained to catch and kill wild pigs. Law enforcements searched Steven’s home and conceived copies of the dog-fighting videos and related commodities in April 2003.
Procedural History
Stevens was indicted under 18 U.S.C. Section 48 in a District Court of Western Pennsylvania for “knowingly selling depictions in interstate commerce for commercial gain.” In 1999, Congress legislated Section 48 with the intention to restrict the distribution of “crush videos,” which were fetish videos demonstrating women tormenting animals. The District Court incarcerated Stevens for 37 months. The District Court decided to punish the depictions of animal cruelty rather than the underlying conduct because the people in the videos conducting the act were often hard to locate.
Stevens appealed his convictions arguing that Section 48 violated the First Amendment, therefore making it unconstitutional. The Third Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals sided with Stevens, which made 18 U.S.C. Section 48 unconstitutional and reversed Steven’s convictions. The court reasoning was that the animal cruelty videos that Stevens distributed were protected speech and banning the portrayals of animal cruelty would create a new category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment under the law that was in question.
In 2009 of April, the Supreme Court granted certiorari. The Supreme Court task was to conclude if prohibiting videos showing animal cruelty breaches the First Amendment.
Issues
Under the First Amendment, can the government prohibit the portrayals of animal cruelty? If the First Amendment protects the portrayal of animal cruelty, then does Section 48 violates the Defendant’s First Amendment rights? The Court knows that the government usually cannot censor someone’s speech because of its message’s content, but there is also a long-standing consensus against animal cruelty. For this case, the Court must find a counterpoise with these interests, and yet find a deliverance that will decide if the Congress can prohibit certain kinds of speech.
Rule(s)
1. First Amendment
According to this Amendment, the government cannot censure speech because of its content. There are a few things that the government considered unprotected speech, which include violence, defamation, obscenity, and child pornography. In Texas v. Johnson (1989), the Supreme Court said, “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.”
2. Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942)
The United States used this case as part of their argument saying that in order to decide if a division of speech is secured under the First Amendment, the Court should considered the balancing test that compares the expressive value with its costs to society.
3. New York v. Ferber (1982)
In this case, the owners of an adult bookstore were jailed because they sold child pornography videos. The Court concluded that child pornography is unprotected speech. Just like Ferber, the transaction of these animal cruelty videos supplies an economic motive for the innovation of these tapes. To stop these kinds of acts was to forestall the sale of these portrayals.
Application/Analysis
The Supreme Court denied the government’s argument that the portrayals of animal cruelty should be perceived as a new type of unprotected speech under the First Amendment. The First Amendment does let you exercise the freedom of speech, but the Court stated that the existing categories of unprotected speech under the First Amendment are limited and are long-standing. All 50 states have law that ban animal cruelty itself, but the depictions of animal cruelty has not been regulated yet.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court ruled that Section 48 is overbroad, and it is not valid under the First Amendment, therefore the portrayals of animal cruelty is not protected under the First Amendment.