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Animal Wellness Action Applauds St. Landry Parish Council for Rejecting Cockfighting Legalization Scheme
Animal Wellness Action Applauds St. Landry Parish Council for Rejecting Cockfighting Legalization Scheme
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy commend the St. Landry Parish Council for rejecting a cockamamie and legally baseless proposal advanced by cockfighting advocates to undermine Louisiana’s longstanding ban on cockfighting.
At last night’s parish council meeting, members voted down a motion urging the area’s Louisiana state representative to introduce legislation in Baton Rouge exempting St. Landry Parish from Louisiana’s anti-cockfighting statute.
“We applaud the council for turning back this folly of an idea,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action. “The idea that one parish could carve itself out from a statewide felony law is absurd on its face. Louisiana’s cockfighting ban is settled law, overwhelmingly enacted nearly two decades ago, and fully consistent with both state and federal constitutional authority.”
Louisiana criminalized cockfighting in 2007, with the law taking effect in 2008, after enduring the embarrassment of being the last state in the union to forbid this malicious form of cruelty – where cockfighters affix knives or gaffs to the birds’ legs to heighten the bloodletting in staged animal battles. State and federal courts across the country have repeatedly and unanimously affirmed the authority of states and the federal government to prohibit cockfighting and related activities. Animal Wellness Action attorneys Scott Edwards and Kate Schultz did a review of some of this case law in this 2022 blog post.
Following the rejection of the proposed exemption, the council agreed to ask the Louisiana Attorney General to issue an opinion on the constitutionality of the state’s anti-cockfighting law. Animal Wellness Action supports that step and welcomes the opportunity the state’s top legal official to make it plain to cockfighters that there is no question about the constitutional soundness of Louisiana’s anti-cockfighting law.
“The Attorney General, reviewing the unanimous set of rulings by federal and state courts, will make it plain to the cockfighters that their legal thinking is utterly groundless,” Pacelle said. “This is settled law: the states and the federal government have unambiguous authority to outlaw cockfighting as a form of extreme animal cruelty, and they have exercised that authority by passing overlapping and comprehensive policies against staged animal fighting.”
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the St. Landry Parish proposal is its complete disconnect from political and legal reality. By 2007, after voter-approved ballot measures outlawed cockfighting in Arizona, Missouri, and Oklahoma, and after state lawmakers did the same in New Mexico, Louisiana stood alone as the last state in the nation where cockfighting remained legal. That status had become a national embarrassment, and lawmakers from both parties recognized that the practice was incompatible with modern standards of decency.
In 2007, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed the cockfighting ban by a staggering 102–1 vote. The Senate followed with a 34–4 vote in favor of prohibition. The debate in Baton Rouge was not about whether cockfighting should end, but whether it should be halted immediately or phased out over a short transition period. The final compromise eliminated gambling at cockfights in 2007 and banned cockfighting outright in 2008. That same year, Congress enacted a federal felony prohibition on animal fighting, creating an overlapping and comprehensive national ban.
Taken together, these rapid-fire political actions represented a collective American rejection of cockfighting as irreconcilable with civil society. Like bear baiting, gladiator fights, burning so-called witches at the stake, and other once-tolerated cruelties, staged animal fighting has been consigned to history as shameful and no longer acceptable.
“Even a hypothetical action by state lawmakers to create a cockfighting enclave in St. Landry Parish — which is never going to happen — would do nothing to override the federal law that makes cockfighting and a range of other related activities felony offenses on every inch of U.S. soil.”
Louisiana U.S. Senator John Kennedy is currently pushing the bipartisan FIGHT Act, which would further strengthen enforcement of the already robust federal ban on animal fighting. The legislation would close loopholes by cracking down on the interstate shipment of fighting birds, outlawing simulcast gambling on cockfights, and enhancing forfeiture provisions for property used in these criminal enterprises.
The FIGHT Act has garnered more than 1,000 endorsers nationwide, including the National Sheriffs’ Association, the Louisiana District Attorneys Association, the American Gaming Association, and the United Egg Producers — a rare and powerful coalition reflecting broad consensus that animal fighting is inseparable from organized crime and public harm.
“Law enforcement, prosecutors, agriculture leaders, and the gaming industry all agree on this issue,” Pacelle said. “Cockfighting is cruelty, it’s criminal, and it deserves strong enforcement.”
Beyond its cruelty, cockfighting is closely tied to illegal gambling, narcotics trafficking, weapons offenses, and violence, and it poses serious biosecurity risks. Fighting birds are routinely transported across state lines, kept in unsanitary conditions, and exposed to blood-to-blood contact — conditions that accelerate the spread of avian influenza and other deadly poultry diseases.
“At a time when avian flu continues to devastate poultry operations and wildlife, any attempt to revive cockfighting is dangerously irresponsible,” Pacelle said. “This is how diseases spread, livelihoods are destroyed, and taxpayers end up paying the price.”
“We don’t revisit bans on dogfighting, bear baiting, or other barbaric practices because a handful of criminals want to profit from them,” Pacelle added. “Cockfighting belongs in the same category — a relic of cruelty that the law has rightly and permanently consigned to the strictest legal prohibitions.”
Animal Wellness Action, the Center for a Humane Economy, and SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) will continue monitoring developments in St. Landry Parish and will ensure that any attempt to organize or facilitate cockfighting is promptly brought to the attention of law enforcement, prosecutors, and the public.
Animal Wellness Action is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(4) whose mission is to help animals by promoting laws and regulations at federal, state and local levels that forbid cruelty to all animals. The group also works to enforce existing anti-cruelty and wildlife protection laws. Animal Wellness Action believes helping animals helps us all. Twitter: @AWAction_News
Center for a Humane Economy is a Washington, D.C.-based 501(c)(3) whose mission is to help animals by helping forge a more humane economic order. The first organization of its kind in the animal protection movement, the Center encourages businesses to honor their social responsibilities in a culture where consumers, investors, and other key stakeholders abhor cruelty and the degradation of the environment and embrace innovation as a means of eliminating both. The Center believes helping animals helps us all. Twitter: @TheHumaneCenter
SHARK (Showing Animals Respect and Kindness) is a non-profit organization with supporters around the United States and beyond. With a small core of volunteers, and a staff of five, SHARK battles tirelessly against cockfighting, steer tailing, bullfighting, pigeon shoots, turkey shoots, canned hunts and more. President Steve Hindi has an open invitation to debate “the opposition.” X: @sharkonline