SCOTUS Overturns Ant-Animal Cruelty Law

[Alex]

Read the decision. They address that very question. That is the beauty of the courts, they don't just issue a final answer but provide essays that show their work and reasoning.

The law was not ruled unconstitutional because it outlawed filming animal cruelty, it was ruled unconstitutional because while it may have outlawed animal cruelty it also outlawed a bunch of other things that would be unconsitutional to ban (such as selling hunting magazines in Washington, D.C., or perhaps broadcasting episodes of Professional Bullriders Association events in a location that has barred such due to their risk of animal injury).

In the court's opinion that is not true of child pornography laws (especially since with child pornography it is frequently the very act of filming that is deemed to have inflicted harm--which is not generally the case with animal cruelty). And they explain why, in detail. And the decision explicitly says they are not ruling it unconstitutional to criminalize filming animal cruelty for entertainment purposes but that the statute needs to be written much more narrowly than it is now so that this is all that gets outlawed.

So the real analogy is to say it is ok to make it illegal to speak in a crowded movie theater because that also has the effect of criminalizing shouting fire in a movie theater.