Federal Judge Tosses Out Justice Department Lawsuit Challenging California Laws Forbidding Extreme Cage Confinement of Laying Hens

Yesterday delivered one more loss for the crowd hellbent on overturning California’s common-sense laws that farm animals should not be kept in cages or crates so small they cannot turn around.

A federal judge appointed by President Trump ruled against the U.S. Department of Justice’s ill-considered, misplaced federal lawsuit to nullify the Golden State’s minimal protections for laying hens, including its restriction on the sale of eggs from caged hens. (Six other states have similar laws.)

In the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Judge Mark C. Scarsi ruled that the DOJ did not have legal standing in its challenge to hen welfare protections provided by Prop 2 (2008), AB 1437 (2010), and Prop 12 (2018) — three laws that I’ve worked on over the last two decades and that won 15 million votes at the ballot box in California, as well as majorities of lawmakers in the state Assembly and Senate and the signature of former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The DOJ argued that Prop 2 and the other laws are federally preempted under the Egg Products Inspection Act (EPIA). But that 1970 law only relates to food safety, not to humane treatment. Other courts dismissed similar claims from some farming interests more than a decade ago, and the court didn’t show much sympathy for this latest legal rehash.

Judge Scarsi said the DOJ had no standing to sue the state of California and, more broadly, warned that accepting the DOJ’s argument would open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits designed to override state policies — a misuse of the courts that he described as having a “manifest” potential for abuse.

The DOJ’s courtroom maneuver was more about theatrics than legal principles. The DOJ tried to explain that it filed the lawsuit to keep the cost of eggs down, falsely claiming that the state’s humane-housing standards drove up prices.

But big spikes in egg prices over the last year had nothing to do with California’s hen welfare laws and everything to do with the contagion of H5N1 — which has been propelled partly by inadequate enforcement of our federal anti-cockfighting law. Since the H5N1 outbreak occurred, the USDA and state actors have killed 145 million laying hens. It was that deadly disease that was the singular cause of price spikes that intermittently occurred over the last three years.

Key Showdown in Congress Coming in April

The federal ruling yesterday is the 23rd straight loss for factory farming interests and their government allies in trying to overturn Prop 12 and other laws similar to it. That included a stinging defeat in the U.S. Supreme Court in May 2023 in a ruling joined by conservative and liberal Justices that Prop 12 applied only to in-state agricultural production and sales and is a proper exercise of state authority.

But the National Pork Producers Council and China’s Smithfield Foods are keeping their hustle going in Congress. There, they are desperate to have elected lawmakers nullify free and fair U.S. elections in the states. Prop 12 commanded a 63% supermajority, and Question 3 in Massachusetts passed with an astonishing 78% vote in favor of taking breeding sows, laying hens, and veal calves out of immobilizing crates and cages.

Earlier this month, the U.S. House Agriculture Committee, led by Rep. Glenn “GT” Thompson, R-Pa., inserted language into the Farm Bill that would effectively repeal Prop 12 and Question 3.

This provision — formerly known as the EATS Act, and now rebranded as the Save Our Bacon Act, or as we call it, the SOB Act — is grounded on a set of contrived and demonstrably false arguments: that there is an unworkable patchwork of state farm animal housing laws with conflicting rules; that farmers are being coerced to change their production practices because of the size of the California market; and that prices for pork are sky-high. There’s not a whiff of truth to any one of them.

Let’s take each in its turn (all detailed comprehensively in our Save Our Bacon report):

• The NPPC is in a lather over just two laws (Prop 12 and Question 3) nearly identical in construction. Two very similar laws do not constitute a patchwork. And with no statewide farm animal ballot measures on the drawing board, it’s going to stay just that way.
  
  
• As for the phony coercion argument, California and Massachusetts need just 6% of all U.S. pork to be gestation-crate-free; fortunately, the transition to cage-free housing in the pig industry has been on the march for 25 years. About 46% of all sow production is already gestation-crate-free. That means that not one farmer has to switch his or her production capacity to meet the demand in California and Massachusetts. That capacity is pre-existing.
  
  
• As for cost, the pork industry is experiencing record profits and prices for pork across the nation did not rise at all due to Prop 12 or Question 3.

SOB Act is a Gift to China and Smithfield Foods

Here’s what’s really at work.

The biggest member of the NPPC is Smithfield Foods, which is now wholly owned by a Chinese company that is under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party. Smithfield, purchased by this Chinese company in 2013, now controls 25% of all U.S. pig production.

If the SOB Act is enacted, this policy would pull the rug out from under American farmers who have invested millions to comply with Prop 12 and Question 3. It would give Smithfield an opening to expand production as family farms go out of business and to set up its massive, high-rise hog factory farms to American shores.

The lawmakers pushing the repeal of American laws aren’t doing it for farmers. Farmers who sell into California’s market do so voluntarily. If farmers don’t want to meet that housing standard, they can sell in any one of the 48 states with no sales restrictions and to 139 countries that import U.S.-produced pork.

The NPPC is not truly concerned with practical farming matters. This is all about ideology. The NPPC and its allies in Congress just don’t want to see any animal welfare standards. Of any kind. And they don’t want us judging them. It irritates them that we say it’s wrong to immobilize animals in small cages.

Look no further than simultaneous debates on animal welfare. Chairman Thompson and a small set of other House Agriculture Committee members pushing repeal of Prop 12 are also actively working to oppose strongly bipartisan legislation to strengthen our national laws against illegal dogfighting and cockfighting — violent, crime-ridden enterprises that are tied to narcotics trafficking, illegal weapons, and organized criminal networks.

Let’s face it, if lawmakers cannot even find their way to back a narrowly tailored bill to combat animal fighting — legislation that has support from the National Sheriffs’ Association and more than 500 law enforcement agencies, as well as backing from major egg and poultry trade groups — then you can only come to one conclusion: they don’t believe our nation should have laws to stop the mistreatment of animals, of any kind.

Fortunately, most federal lawmakers do care about animal welfare. And as legislation moves out of the narrow confines of the Agriculture Committee and to the full House chamber, they’ll be able to add their voices. And those lawmakers also undoubtedly care, too, about democratic decision-making and the protection of American elections.

But it’s important that your Members of Congress get a reminder that you care, too. So please contact your U.S. House representative and two U.S. senators and urge them to oppose any Farm Bill that includes the SOB Act. And if they have an opportunity, urge them to support an amendment to strike that awful provision.