Nathan Winograd, an animal advocate and lawyer, has criticised the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care and Control (LACDACC) about their policy which in effect silences volunteers working at animal shelters who want to expose malpractice. Mr Winograd tells me in an email that LACDACC have just released a policy which prohibits volunteers from speaking out honestly about what goes on at animal shelters on social media platforms.
Winograd states that there are restrictions on what you can say on social media about animal shelters in Los Angeles. You can’t say a dog or cat was ‘killed’. They’ve got to use a euphemism like “put to sleep” or “euthanised”. The idea, there, is to make the killing of shelter animals more palatable to the public. It is better for some animal shelters to hide behind the veneer of hobbled language about what’s going on which is the mass killing of unwanted animals.
The important aspect of this story is that rules governing what volunteers at shelters can say are illegal in the US because they are a violation of America’s First Amendment. This critical part of the American constitution gives American citizens the inalienable right as we all know to speak out against, in this instance, inhumane conduct by a government-run shelter.
It seems, therefore, that some local authorities are cynically trying to introduce regulations concerning the running of animal shelters which are against the constitution. They want to introduce them to protect themselves against the truth, as the volunteer sees it, leaking out on social media.
Winograd says that LACDACC is not alone in taking this stance. I am surprised to learn that Best Friends Animal Society also promotes an illegal policy according to Nathan Winograd.
They encourage pounds to implement policies where “any negative posts on social media will not be tolerated”.
As Winograd says, this protects shelters when arguably making inhumane decisions and to conduct inhumane practices. It protects them from being accountable to the public. If you prevent malpractices being aired you simply encourage animal cruelty. Airing the truth is the way to protect animals.
If an animal shelter organisation wants to prioritise protecting their reputation at any cost, they are undermining their raison d’être; the purpose for their existence.
Winograd says that communities in Memphis, Tennessee and in Austin Texas tried to stifle dissent and criticism. Austin Texas was forced to rescind their gagging rules under the threat of litigation.
Animals in shelters don’t have a voice. The volunteers who work at shelters are their voice. It needs to be heard. It should not be gagged by some sort of illegal anti-constitutional rules imposed by local authority. When you silence the volunteers, you also silenced the animals.
Nathan Winograd of the No Kill Advocacy Center has written a model letter to the Los Angeles County officials. Here it is:
Our letter to Los Angeles County officials:
Madam Chair and Members of the Board of Supervisors:
On June 21, 2023, the Los Angeles County Department of Animal Care & Control (LACDACC) released a new volunteer policy that threatens to fire volunteers if they criticize the pound on their personal social media pages, fail to “be positive in tone, image, content, and verbiage,” or speak honestly about what occurs there — such as saying, “the dog was killed” rather than using euphemisms like “put to sleep” or “euthanized” which sugarcoat the violence and make the task of killing easier.
42 U.S.C. § 1983 prohibits government officials from subjecting “any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws…” It is a violation of Section 1983 for a municipal government agency to take action designed to prevent or intimidate people from exercising their First Amendment rights or punish them for doing so, and there can be no dispute that complaining about conditions at animal shelters is a constitutionally protected right. Volunteers not only have the First Amendment right to speak out against inhumane conduct by a government shelter, they have a constitutionally protected right to demand that the government correct the identified wrongs.
As the Supreme Court has unequivocally stated, a government entity “may not deny a benefit to a person on a basis that infringes his constitutionally protected interests — especially, his interest in freedom of speech.” Moreover, “the First Amendment does not permit a public official… to exclude persons from otherwise-open online dialogue because they expressed views with which the official disagrees.” More recently, federal courts have heldthat “Official censorship based on a state actor’s subjective judgment that the content of protected speech is offensive or inappropriate is viewpoint discrimination.”
Mayor Chair and Members of the Board of Supervisors, volunteers are the eyes, ears, and heart of the community. Animals in shelters have no voice and need others to speak for them. Silencing volunteers silences the animals. And silence has life-and-death consequences. Unfortunately, LACDACC officials have decided that they will terminate volunteers — and potentially kill the animals they help save — if those volunteers do not sign away their constitutional rights. That is not only pernicious, it is illegal.
Because LACDACC’s volunteer social media policy is so clearly unconstitutional and contrary to our country’s fundamental principles of liberty, we request that LACDACC rescind it.
Very truly yours,
Nathan J. Winograd
Executive Director
My thanks to Nathan Winograd and his newsletter which is always valuable. Winograd is probably America’s greatest animal advocate because he consistently fights for the precious rights of animals in shelters across the United States of America.
Killed is killed. It’s simply factually correct. It’s not the sane word as murder. I would take that to Court if I lived there!
Disgusting protection of corrupt, unethical and immoral pharma companies!