Massachusetts Farmed Animal Protections Upheld

In a major victory for farmed animal welfare, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit held in early October that Massachusetts’s Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (aka “Question 3”) is constitutional and not preempted by federal law. The state law—enacted by ballot initiative in 2016 with the support of nearly 78 percent of Massachusetts voters—prohibits the confinement of egg-laying hens, mother pigs, and calves raised for veal in cages so small the animals are unable to turn around or fully extend their limbs. It also bans the in-state sale of products derived from animals held in such conditions.

The ruling closed the latest chapter in what has been a complex series of decisions in this case. The plaintiffs—a group of out-of-state pork producers—initially argued that the law was unconstitutional because it exempted in-state federally inspected slaughter establishments from the sales ban. The plaintiffs asserted that this discriminated against out-of-state federally inspected slaughter establishments. The district court agreed that the sales ban exception was unconstitutional and removed that provision from the law.

The plaintiffs next argued that, since the exception was gone and the law now applied to federally inspected slaughter plants in Massachusetts, it violated the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), which prohibits states from imposing certain requirements on the operations of FMIA-regulated establishments. This time the court disagreed, explaining that the law’s regulation of sales was not the same as regulating operations—therefore, the state law was not preempted by the federal law. On appeal, the First Circuit affirmed the district court’s ruling.

The decision comes as Congress is considering multiple federal bills that would undo state farmed animal protection laws, including Massachusetts’s Question 3 and California’s nearly identical Proposition 12, and circumvent the court decisions upholding them.

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