The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that 18 U. S. C. §48 which criminalizes the commercial creation, sale, or possession of certain depictions of animal cruelty, but which does not penalize the actual cruelty a violation of the First Amendment.

The statute defines “depiction of animal cruelty” as

any visual or auditory depiction, including any photograph, motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image, or sound recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured,wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place,regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the State;

As such many of the illegal acts are not acts of cruelty. It would include pictures of a veterinarian putting a cat to sleep and pictures in hunting magazines. The statute excludes

any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value.

But it would still excludes hunting magazines where the purpose of the picture is to entertain. Particularly in Washington DC where hunting is illegal. Pictures of legal cock fights in Puerto Rico would be illegal if sent to any of the fifty states.

The stated purpose of the legislation was to outlaw pictures of crush videos in which people are seen killing animals by stepping on them, often with high heels to give others sexual pleasure. But United States v. Stevens involved dog fighting.

Since the vast majority of pictures that violate the law, including hunting magazines, would not be considered by most people to be cruel the Supreme Court found that the legislation was overbroad and therefore unconstitutional.