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), Animal Legal Defense Fund, Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, and Food and Water Watch sued the Farm Service Agency for their pattern and practice of violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The Farm Service...
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...
FarmSTAND (formerly the Food Project at Public Justice), the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Richman Law Group filed a joint lawsuit in the District of Columbia Superior Court against Hormel Foods, alleging the company was misleading consumers through the advertising of its Natural Choice®...
A coalition of groups representing family farmers, sustainable agriculture advocates and concerned citizens throughout the country filed suit against the United States Department of Agriculture. The suit aims to stop a USDA policy allowing industrial agriculture facilities to set up operations in communities without undergoing...
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...
We are 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 Checkoff program in Montana.
In Montana, ranchers have to pay a $1 tax per head...
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....
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...
