Appellate verdicts: 1st Amendment, trapping, pigs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

Confining anti-circus and rodeo
protesters to “free expression zones” far from
the entrance to the state-owned Cow Palace arena
in San Francisco violates their First Amend-ment
rights to freedom of speech and assembly, a
three-judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled on October 20, 2004.
“Cordoning protesters off in a zone the size of a
parking space, located over 200 feet from the
entrance, far from encouraging interaction with
them, is more likely to give the impression to
passers-by that these are people to be avoided,”
wrote Judge Martha Berzon.

The National Trappers Association does
not have legal standing to try to overturn the
1998 California ballot Proposition 4 ban on
leghold traps and the poisons sodium cyanide and
Compound 1080, ruled U.S. District Judge Thelton
Hender-son during the third week of October 2004.

“The Court is not aware of any authority,”
Henderson wrote, “that holds that the mere fact
that a party conforms his behavior to comply with
a change in the law is sufficient to confer
standingŠThe fact that Proposition 4 requires
trappers to use alternatives to certain traps
does not, in and of itself, demonstrate a
concrete injury in fact.” The Ninth U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals in 2002 exempted government
efforts to protect endangered species from
Proposition 4, which already exempted “nuisance”
wildlife trappers if they pass a state training
course. After Henderson’s verdict, the
California Fish & Game Commission withdrew
proposals to introduce a hunting and trapping
season on red foxes for the first time, and to
nearly double the bobcat trapping season. Both
were considered at request of the California
Trappers Association. Trappers in California
killed 394 bobcats during the 2002-2003 season,
while hunters killed 342, for a combined total
21% higher than in the previous winter. In the
interim the average price paid for bobcat pelts
at auction rose from $66 to $186.

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in
Denver on October 29 overturned a July 2002
ruling by U.S. District Judge Robin J. Cauthron
of Oklahoma City that Seaboard Farms and other
“pig factories” need not report ammonia emissions
if the total is under 100 pounds per day from any
one barn. The federal reporting threshhold of
100 pounds “per facility” means per farm, not
per barn, the Court of Appeals said.