It was a day of wild hypotheticals Tuesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court reached far and wide for help in deciding whether a federal law that makes it a crime to depict animal cruelty violates the First Amendment. By the end of the riveting hour of argument in United States v. Stevens, it seemed likely that a sizable majority of the Court was ready to strike down the law as too broad or too vague.
“Certainly the tone of the argument would suggest that the statute is in trouble,” said Andrew Tauber of Mayer Brown, who attended the argument and filed a brief against the law for the National Coalition Against Censorship. The law sweeps so broadly, Tauber added, that “it takes very little imagination to come up with dozens of hypotheticals” of depictions that could be vulnerable to prosecution but should be protected by the First Amendment.
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