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News from Earth!
Supreme Court overturns anti-animal cruelty law in First Amendment case
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By Robert Barnes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Supreme Court on Tuesday forcefully struck down a federal law aimed at banning depictions of dog fighting and other violence against animals, saying it violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and created a "criminal prohibition of alarming breadth."
The 8 to 1 ruling, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was a ringing endorsement of the First Amendment's protection of even distasteful expression. Roberts called "startling and dangerous" the government's argument that the value of certain categories of speech should be weighed against their societal costs when protecting free speech.
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