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With shares of SeaWorld crashing as a result of the documentary film Blackfish, will the movie’s producer, CNN, be charged with terrorism? Under the 2006 Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (AETA), anyone who causes the loss of property or profits to institutions that use or sell animals can be prosecuted and face up to 20 years in prison, depending on the amount of profit loss.  This overly broad law has not only compromised our constitutional right to free speech and free assembly but has also changed the public discourse, giving people permission to describe animal advocates as “terrorists.”  The irony is that the real terrorists here are the companies (or institutions) that the activists are targeting.  These companies employ terror when they kidnap, deprive, mutilate, confine, neglect, torture, slaughter and skin animals alive in factory and fur farms, behind circus tents, in laboratories and, of course, in the tanks of Sea World. Of course, the federal government would never file terrorism charges against CNN because it would be a PR disaster, but I wish they would because a spotlight on AETA would force Congress to change or eliminate the law. In early August, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review AETA, claiming it violates the First Amendment.

Photo: NBC News

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the federal Animal Enterprise Act (AETA), claiming it violates the First Amendment. Under AETA, which was passed in 2006, anyone who causes the loss of property or profits to institutions that use or sell animals can be prosecuted and face up to 20 years in prison, depending on the amount of profit loss. CCR claims that AETA is vague and “makes no distinction between loss caused by criminal acts and loss caused by constitutionally-protected activity.”

Trespassing = terrorism?

What’s scarier?  The fact that big business was able to convince Congress to pass a law describing non-violent animal rights activists as “terrorists” or the fact that exercising our first amendment right to free speech can land us in jail, if it’s animal abusers we are targeting. Does that mean I can be arrested for protesting horse-drawn carriages in midtown Manhattan if potential customers decide not to take a ride after seeing my poster? Activists have already been prosecuted and sent to prison under AETA, but the law, which is so clearly unconstitutional, will eventually be overturned.  Learn more about AETA and see how you can help at the Center for Constitutional Rights.