Cases

R-CALF challenges the checkoff’s First Amendment violations (R-CALF v. Vilsack et al., D. Mont.) We were lead counsel on behalf of the nation’s largest organization of independent cattle producers, R-CALF USA, in a suit raising a First Amendment challenge to the administration of the Beef...

Iowa’s second effort to prevent journalists or activists from entering livestock facilities under false pretenses to report on animal abuse was passed and signed into law just two months after U.S. District Judge James Gritzner ruled that Iowa’s law passed in 2012 violated the First...

A just, healthy, and thriving food system requires transparency. Public Justice engages in litigation to strike down the Ag-Gag laws that penalize whistleblowers who expose the truth about the factory farm system.

FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) is lead counsel on behalf of a coalition of public interest groups in a constitutional challenge to North Carolina’s “Anti-Sunshine” law—a statute that, like Ag-Gag laws, allows employers and property owners to sue undercover investigators who wish...

In recent years, more and more state legislatures have – at the urging of lobbyists representing factory farm operations and industrial food producers – taken up “Ag Gag” laws that shroud mega-farms in secrecy and make holding them accountable for pollution, unsafe working conditions and...

This case is a federal constitutional challenge to two newly enacted Wyoming statutes (the “Data Laws”) that are designed to prevent the public from gathering “resource data” on public or private “open land” in the State of Wyoming. See W.S. 6-3-414 (criminal statute) and W.S....

In a victory for transparency in the food system, FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) successfully challenged a Utah statute that criminalized whistleblowing in the animal agricultural industry—in particular, slaughterhouses, meat processing plants, and factory farms. The law at issue—enacted by the state...

FarmSTAND, formerly the Food Project at Public Justice, serves as co-counsel in a challenge to Iowa’s first Ag-Gag law, which criminalizes undercover investigations at factory farms and slaughterhouses. This statute made it a crime to gain access to, or employment at, such a facility under...

Arkansas’ Ag-Gag statute is modeled after the North Carolina statute, but it makes a few tweaks to try to protect it from being overturned as unconstitutional. The Arkansas Ag-Gag law provides an employer liquidated damages against any person who “exceeds the[ir] authority” in a “nonpublic...

Industrial agriculture is a major driver of climate change. However, the Environmental Protection Agency has failed to treat the industry like the climate polluter it is. That is why FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice) led 25 climate, environmental justice, and rural community...

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 promised $4 billion in debt relief for farmers and ranchers of color to mitigate the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on a population previously excluded from government resources and support. In response to this attempt to address the...

Like many other states, Indiana has a “Right-to-Farm” statute, meant to codify the coming to the nuisance doctrine—so city-dwellers cannot move to rural lands and demand farms change their operations. Corporate agribusiness has, however, been pushing efforts to expand the scope of these laws to...