Thank Your Senators; Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act Passed in Senate

On September 30 the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act -- an act intended to criminalize the intimidation of scientists involved in animal research -- passed the Senate by unanimous consent. I wrote in support of this bill earlier this month.

This is from a press release from the AAAS related to the issue:

In the wee hours of the morning before officially recessing for the fall campaign trail, the Senate passed the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act (S. 3880) under a unanimous consent agreement. The bill, introduced by Senators James Inhofe (R-OK) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), addresses the increasingly aggressive tactics that animal rights extremists are using to frighten and intimidate the families of researchers and the businesses that have ties to animal enterprises.

The AETA bill attempts to walk a narrow legal path between legitimate forms of animal rights activities and harassment and violence perpetrated by extremists against organizations, individual scientists, and their family members. It lays out civil and criminal penalties (a fine or up to 10 years in prison) for violent and non-violent offenses, as well as restitution orders for economic damages such as the costs associated with repeating an experiment.

At the same time, the bill specifically states that it does not prohibit lawful activities protected under the First Amendment, such as "peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration[s]." It also protects for lawful economic disruptions such as boycotts or the release of information about an animal enterprise that may lead to negative market reactions.

Over the years it has become difficult for scientists to conduct research at university campuses because of the increasingly aggressive tactics that animal rights extremists had begun to use to frighten and intimidate the families of researchers and the businesses that have ties to animal enterprises. (See STC July 2006 issue).

In two well-documented cases in August, an attempt was made to firebomb the home of a UCLA primate researcher. The bomb, however, was placed at the wrong home and fortunately failed to ignite. Earlier that same month a UCLA neurobiologist decided to discontinue his research with animals aimed at better understanding Parkinson's disease after his family had been harassed and threatened over a number of years.

Senator Inhofe had introduced legislation in October 2005 with stiffer penalties, but that bill failed to gain traction. The UCLA incidents assisted in leading Senator Feinstein to partner with Inhofe in introducing a new bill (S. 3880) with the assistance of the Justice Department and FBI to ensure that First Amendment issues were protected.

The House Judiciary Committee attempted to mark up a similar bill (H.R. 4239) introduced by Rep. Thomas Petri (R-WI) but were left with insufficient time to address it and a number of other bills on its agenda before recessing.

The Petri legislation also includes stiffer penalties as compared to the Senate-passed bill and so the Inhofe/Feinstein bill may become the vehicle for any House deliberations.

Thank you Senators for your prompt and right action on this issue. I hope that the House will promptly take up the issue in November in a similarly bipartisan manner.