Agribusiness and their corporate lobbyists have convinced a number of legislatures to pass bills criminalizing activists and whistleblowers, who dare to expose animal cruelty or malfeasance. The bills known as “ag-gag” laws explicitly target citizens’ First Amendment rights. But multiple states have seen strong legal action and efforts to fight such draconian legislation.

In what is described as a “first of its kind” report, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and Defending Rights and Dissent detail the second wave of “ag-gag” laws passed from 2011 to 2017 in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, North Carolina, Utah, and Wyoming.

The report also offers a concise history of the first wave of “ag-gag” laws in the 1990s and how law enforcement, corporations, and politicians promoted the idea that industry was “under siege” by “eco-terrorists” or “animal rights extremists” by the late 1980s to advocate for bills that targeted individuals’ right to dissent.

As articulated in the report [PDF], “ag-gag” laws typically prohibit “documentation of agricultural practices,” “misrepresentations in job applications” to “gain access to closed facilities,” and require “immediate reporting of illegal animal cruelty” in order to curtail “investigations documenting widespread and systematic violence.”

Read the full report here.