The First-Ever Charges from an Ag-Gag Bill Have Been Dropped

Yesterday we heard about a Utah woman named Amy Meyer who was being prosecuted for filming a slaughterhouse from a public location. Now, according to Will Potter, who broke the original story (which is still worth reading), those charges have been dropped.

Potter says he'll have more on the story in the future, but as of now, it appears that the charges were dismissed without prejudice, which means they could ostensibly be brought again. But considering that it appears the charges against Meyer—who, again, was filming a slaughterhouse's outdoors activities from a public space outside the slaughterhouse's fences—were dropped because of an outpour of popular support, it's unlikely that the first-ever charges stemming from an ag-gag bill will be brought against her again.

Regardless, that the charges were brought at all is patently absurd. As Motherboard's Mat McDermott noted yesterday, arresting someone for filming something visible from a public place makes that place more photo-sensitive than the White House, your local city hall, airports, wherever. That also made the case particularly egregious, and it's not likely that this will set precedent for ag-gag bills at large, which are generally aimed at barring activists from getting cameras inside their workplace.

Public photography has been receiving more and more legal scrutiny as of late, which raised plenty of First Amendment concerns as a whole. But ag-gag bills go beyond the rapidly-eroding concept of personal privacy, and instead extend ridiculous protections to corporate and industrial interests whose main concern is hiding damning video from the public.

@derektmead