
State law: You can't say bad things about a business - puppetmaster3
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/01/opinion/no-more-exposes-in-north-carolina.html?_r=0
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otterley
I imagine these laws eventually will be overturned by the Supreme Court as
contrary to the First Amendment. It involves punishment of core political
speech, so it should be a relatively open-and-shut case.

The strongest argument in favor of the Constitutionality of these laws is that
they are outlawing speech that could not have been made but for the violation
of another law (i.e. common trespass and/or contract breach), but I'd be very
surprised if the laws survived on those grounds. Newsgathering is often
performed by trespassing, even newsgathering that's been previously upheld by
the Court (e.g. Pentagon Papers, in which the author had unlawful access to
classified materials).

~~~
Someone1234
I definitely agree that this law violates the First Amendment and therefore
suspect if a case came to the SCOTUS they would rule against it (assuming it
even needed to get that high).

But my question is this: From my understanding, the First Amendment
establishes limits on what government can and cannot do, it doesn't establish
what a private entity can and cannot do. In this case the law allows a private
business to sue a private individual, and while the law itself is established
by government, the use of that law is not.

So maybe someone with more legal expertise than myself can answer: Is it
possible to bring this issue before SCOTUS if it is only used by non-
government? Have they effectively found a loophole by keeping government out
of the actual lawsuits? Can you sue a law itself (would you have standing)?

~~~
Gibbon1
I'm not a lawyer but can point to 1960's court rulings invalidating real
estate covenants that banned homeowners from selling to Blacks, Jews, and
Mexicans. The supreme court invalidated the convents by flatly refusing to
enforce them. In short the court said 'not your personal army.' Meaning the
courts weren't going to accept lawsuits attempting to enforce racially based
covenants.

tl;dr: Courts don't actually overturn laws or contracts instead they refuse to
enforce them.

~~~
ubernostrum
The racial-covenant case ( _Shelley v. Kraemer_ ) is actually interesting for
the departure from normal constitutional questions -- typically a court either
upholds the constitutionality of a statute, or rules the statute
unconstitutional and thus unenforceable.

In _Shelley_ , effectively the court ruled that racial covenants, which were
private contracts, were perfectly legal, perfectly constitutional and
perfectly valid, but that the state government (which would normally enforce
this type of contract) could not enforce racial covenants because doing so
would require actions outside the powers of the state government.

Which comes back to whether either a state government or the federal
government could enforce certain types of gag-order provisions in contracts,
since the required action might similarly be outside the powers of the
government.

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cmurf
These practices should be completely exposed because they're dead-end
businesses. There really should only be expensive meat from ethically treated
animals raised on small farms for sale. And instead of investing money in
shutting people up, the money should be invested in growing meat without
animals, as the competition with the small farms. These giant agribusinesses
are terrible.

It's dark comedy how "modern" agriculture insists upon the necessity of
cruelty to animals as a business right, compared to how animals are raised and
slaughtered in 3rd world countries today, and actually for most of human
history. We're so completely stupid, and these companies just want to protect
that stupidity and ignorance for profit.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I agree almost completely, but I think it's not adequate to simply point the
finger at the producers, but also at the consumers, who demand prices so low
that callous cruelty is essentially guaranteed. Of course, overall, we're
mishandling resources massively to channel agricultural output into livestock,
we need to actively reward eating less meat, rather than subsidizing ever more
of it.

~~~
Paul-ish
This appears to be similar to a Lemons market [1]. There is probably a better
term for it in this case, but basically the consumer doesn't know what they
are getting. They see a price point and maybe a fat %, but they don't know how
the animal was treated, so they naturally will go for the lower price point
items. This means producers will cut corners where it saves on cost, because
they will not be held accountable. A solution would be some form of regulation
controlling the way animals can be slaughtered. Whistle-blower laws should
protect people who report violations, rather than the opposite we see here
with ag-gag laws.

It is the same thing with the unsanitary practices exposed in The Jungle.
Consumers didn't know know that their food was being processed in unsanitary
ways. The exposure provided by Sinclair's book eventually led to the formation
of an organization that would become the FDA, which regulates sanitary
conditions for food production in the United States.

* [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons)

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bovermyer
I highly doubt this law will survive for long.

However, that it (and laws like it) was actually considered seriously enough
to pass brings up big questions about the character of those lawmakers who
voted for it.

Here's a link to the actual text of the bill:
[http://www.ncleg.net/Applications/BillLookUp/LoadBillDocumen...](http://www.ncleg.net/Applications/BillLookUp/LoadBillDocument.aspx?SessionCode=2015&DocNum=5076&SeqNum=0)

Pay particular attention to section b paragraph 2.

~~~
michael_h
"duty of loyalty to the employer"

Wow. That's quite the one-way street.

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mc32
This is about North Carolina's extreme position. I think the title should
indicate that.

That said, one would hope this gets overturned as it basically wants to keep
all the dirty laundry in any industry out of scope for whistle blowers by
exposing whistleblowers to fines of up to 5000/day of recording activities.
That's chilling.

~~~
maxerickson
It's kind of stunning that the legislature overrode the governor's veto.

People yell and scream about campaign finance being a problem in the US, I'm
starting to think the bigger problem is that parties have set themselves up to
have advantages getting people on ballots.

In Michigan (where I live), party backed candidates have a substantially
easier time getting on ballots (they only need 1/2 the signatures on the
relevant petitions) and there are term limits on state representatives, so
party leaders and "Lansing bureaucrats" end up having a lot of influence on
what happens at the state level.

Say some district had an independent rep that they _really liked_. By state
law, they can only send them to do their business for a couple of terms, then
the parties get their chance to stand up a patsy (<\--I'm a little cynical I
guess).

~~~
tamana
This is the strongest argument against term limits: it biases teams of warm
bodies over individuals.

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strommen
The partisan politics on this issue are pretty interesting. The NC governor
(who unsuccessfully vetoed this law) is a Republican. But Republicans in the
state legislature voted[1] 67-3 to override the veto. Democrats voted 33-12 to
uphold it.

[1]:
[http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/voteHistory/RollCallVoteTrans...](http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/voteHistory/RollCallVoteTranscript.pl?sSession=2015&sChamber=H&RCS=677)

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cwbrandsma
The Idaho law was struck down already. It was a "knee-jerk reaction" bill that
the governor pushed thru as quickly as possible (when the video of
Bettencourt's place came out, he was getting death threats). But everyone knew
the law wouldn't last long.

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dsmithatx
The fine is $5000 per day of recording. I'm fairly certain that any TV
show/movie using this material will not have much issue with $5000.

~~~
jjulius
But they wouldn't necessarily be the target of the fine. The individual who
actually recorded the footage would be the likely target of the lawsuit, and
in many cases that person could be operating either alone, or for an advocacy
group that might not have much funding to cover such fines.

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hodgesrm
An interesting question is where the NYT and NC Democrats stand on analogous
exposes of Planned Parenthood.[1] If exposing evil Ag businesses is OK, what's
the difference if somebody feels the same about any clinic that performs
abortion? From a free speech perspective it's hard to see the distinction.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us/with-planned-
parenthood...](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/us/with-planned-parenthood-
videos-activist-ignites-abortion-issue.html)

~~~
SwellJoe
The difference there is that the videos told an entirely fabricated story.
Treating this as merely a partisan issue is misdirection.

The people who made the anti-abortion video in question broke a variety of
laws (unrelated to whistle-blowing), and made up a narrative that was
completely at odds with reality.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-plannedparenthood-texas-
id...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-plannedparenthood-texas-
idUSKCN0V32QD)

On the other hand, the videos and documentation that ag-gag laws are intended
to outlaw are videos that are merely displaying the illegal/unethical behavior
of factory farms; they outlaw (or attempt to outlaw, as they may not hold up
in court) protected free speech. If someone were to break a variety of laws
unrelated to whistle-blowers and fabricate stories about factory farms, _then_
you could compare it to that anti-abortion video.

~~~
dragonwriter
> The difference there is that the videos told an entirely fabricated story.

That's not actually the _relevant_ difference, even if it is _a_ difference.
The difference with the PP videos case is that the charges there were for
things that would be a crime _whether or not_ the purpose was gathering
information for publication and whether or not there was secret filming going
on, unlike ag-gag laws which directly target gathering and publicizing
information (whether the story they is accurate or distorted.)

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heapcity
Maybe this law could protect lawyers, like those exposed on 60 minutes this
week, from further sting operations on their money laundering business.

~~~
nefitty
Was just listening to the podcast audio last night. A casual perusal of the
connections between the business world and politics (especially local
political leaders) would reveal the extreme conflicts of interest in cases
such as these. These people aren't protecting anonymous "businesses" or a
disembodied "economy", they're protecting their friends, and many times
themselves.

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elchief
This just makes North Carolina look like a backwards plutocratic sh*thole.

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LinuxBender
Does this prevent someone from blowing the whistle anonymously? Isn't there
some risk in forcing people to be anonymous? e.g. I know I can't go to the
government for help, so I have to post something on WikiLeaks instead?

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nickpsecurity
I say we get as many people as possible to botcott companies in such states.
Also, send them a letter saying they did, tell them how much the competition
is making on the new business, and say that continues until the law is
repealed.

Make it impact their numbers until companies push (or pay) lawmakers to
reverse it. Or don't and better areas prosper.

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rrggrr
If you can contractually give up your right to a jury trial, or to a trial at
all (eg. binding mediation clause), why can't you contractually give up your
right to free speech.

~~~
patmcc
You can give up your right to bring a civil suit, it doesn't impact your right
to a jury in a criminal trial. That's a very important difference.

