Supreme Court: Balking at cruel videos

It has been 25 years since the Supreme Court decided a category of speech -- child pornography -- was so unredeeming that it did not merit the protection of the First Amendment. Justices gave no indication Tuesday that they were ready to add another.

In an oral argument on animal cruelty that touched on bullfighting, cockfighting, fattening geese to make pate and even a hypothetical "human sacrifice channel," the court searched for the limits of the Constitution's guarantee of free speech. The justices indicated Congress had gone too far in its attempt to protect animals from abuse.

The Obama administration asked the court to reinstate a 10-year-old law federal law that bans the production and sale of videos that show torture, mutilation and death of animals. The primary focus of the law was to ban "crush videos," which appeal to a specific sexual fetish by showing women stepping on or torturing small animals.

But an appeals court struck down the law and invalidated the only conviction prosecutors have made under it, that of Robert Stevens of Pittsville, Va. He was convicted not of producing crush videos but films about pit-bull fights.

It was the first of two important First Amendment cases the court is considering in the first week of its new term. The justices turn Wednesday to the amendment's prohibition on government establishment of religion when they consider the appropriateness of a cross erected on federal land to honor World War I dead.

The animal cruelty case, United States v. Stevens, splits advocates of animal rights and free speech. Groups such as the Humane Society of the United States have been active supporters of the law, saying it targets only depictions of acts that already are illegal under federal and state laws and that it has helped dry up the market for videos that depict animal abuse.