Day: September 24, 2003

Library Settles Internet Sexual Harassment Case

A Minneapolis decided in August to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit brought against it by 12 librarians. The case nails the final coffin in any pretension that sexual harassment law is anything but a call to censorship.

The librarians sued because the Minneapolis library decided to offer unfiltered Internet access. Inevitably some patrons of the library chose to use the Internet to view pornography.

At which point the librarians sued claiming that their exposure to the pornography viewed by library patrons constituted a hostile working environment.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunities Commission agreed in 2001 that there was probably cause that exposure to the INtenret pornography constituted a hostile working environment, but the Justice Department declined to sue the library on behalf of the plaintiffs. So they hired an attorney to pursue the case.

The library decided to settle by paying the librarians $435,000 and likely adding restrictions on Internet access for library patrons.

As Eugene Volokh noted in an article on the case back in 2001 for Reason, this case could have far reaching impact,

This is just the latest great leap forward for harassment law. Harassment law already forces employers to suppress sexually suggestive displays (not by any means limited to pornography), sexual jokes, politically offensive statements, and religious proselytizing.

During the Clinton scandals, employment experts sensibly suggested that employers had to suppress Clinton-Lewinsky jokes, because such jokes might have helped create a “sexually hostile work environment.” The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has argued that “educational harassment law” — a body of law developed by analogy to workplace harassment law — requires universities to implement student speech codes. The U.S. Civil Rights Commission has likewise argued that public accommodations harassment law outlaws American Indian team names and mascots, on the grounds that such symbols are racially offensive. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination forced a Boston bar to take down a display that supposedly expressed racist viewpoints.

Ah what a brave new world harassment law has opened up.

Sources:

Library settles with workers who sued over hostile work environment. WCCO.Com, August 15, 2003.

Controversy in the UK Over Plans to Wipe Out the Ruddy Duck

A debate raged this summer in the United Kingdom over the government’s plan to completely eradicate the UK population of the ruddy duck.

The ruddy duck is an American species of duck that was imported into Europe during the 1940s and established itself in the wild in the early 1950s after an accidental release. Currently there are an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 of the animals in Great Britain, most of them in Scotland.

The ruddy duck’s problem is that it is too successful in breeding with closely related species, most importantly the white headed duck which is endangered. Spanish authorities, for example, blame ruddy ducks that fly from the UK to Spain for causing the collapse of the white headed duck population there.

The British government has conducted a number of trials over the past few years, paying up to 1,000 pounds per ruddy duck killed. In total, 2,651 ruddy ducks were killed in the trial programs.

Criticism has come on two fronts. First, there are those who point out that at 1,000 pounds per duck the government could ship the ducks back to the United States via first class air travel.

Second, of course, are the animal rights activists. Animal Aid’s Andrew Tyler likened the concern over preserving the white headed duck to racism. He told The Herald (UK),

Obsessively targeting one species of duck whose only crime has been to mate with another amounts to speciesism.

He also told the Times (London),

. . . the whole thing is stomach-churning. This is the first attempt at an avian extermination programme.

Talk about genetic impurity is racist. This is simply what happens in nature; it’s a natural survival mechanism. The scheme is hugely unpopular and when wildlife preservation groups and landowners refuse to co-operate you are going to see government killing gangs forcing themselves on to land.

Animal Aid organized protests on August 13th and 14th against the planned cull. In a press release announcing the protests, Animal Aid Campaigns Officer Becky Lilly calls the plan to kill the ducks “ethnic cleansing”,

It is disgraceful that the government is committed to this morally repugnant and scientifically illogical slaughter programme. It is particularly disturbing that top-table conservation groups such as the RSPB and the WWT are the main movers for this scheme. They should be focussing their efforts on saving animals and their habitat rather than promoting ethnic cleansing projects. Since so much of the slaughter has already taken place in Scotland, we want the Scottish public to know what is being done in their name and with their taxes. We are confident of continued widespread support.

It’s no wonder that the front page of Animal Aid’s web site argues that, “When it comes to illuminating the core issues relating to animal cruelty, sometimes imaginative prose can reach the places straightforward factual argument cannot.” I.e., when you don’t have any straightforward factual arguments, ditch that in favor of this sort of nonsense.

Sources:

Stop killing the ruddy ducks, say wildlife campaigners. Cameron Simpson, The Herald (UK), August 14, 2003.

R.I.P. Ruddy duck. The BBC, March 3, 2003.

Protesters in duck demo. Evening Times (Glasgow), August 14, 2003.

Ruddy Protests Come To Scotland. Press Release, Animal Aid, August 13, 2003.

HLS Vehicle Storage Building Torched in the UK

The Bright Argus reported that a building owned by Huntingdon Life Sciences and apparently used to store vehicles burned to the ground on August 3.

A Lexis search finds no news on the conclusion of the investigation into the fire, but a number of animal rights extremist web sites, including DirectAction.Info have characterized the fire as an act of “economic sabotage.”

Source:

Arson attack on building linked to Huntingdon Life Sciences. Brighton Argus (UK), August 4, 2003.

U.S. House Approves Funds to Combat Animal Fighting

On July 14 the U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to the Agricultural Appropriations bill that would take $800,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s budget for building repair and maintenance and instead allocate it to focus on enforcement of animal fighting laws.

The Blumenauer-Tancredo Animal Fighting Amendment passed the House on a vote of 222-179, but still must be added to the Senate’s version of the Agricultural Appropriations bill or it will likely be removed by the conference committee on the bill.

There was a rather spirited debate on the floor of the House over the wisdom of taking the money away from the USDA’s buildings fund and applying it to animal fighting enforcement. Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) urged the House to defeat the measure arguing that it was simply an attempt by some legislators to appease the Humane Society of the United States,

The Inspector General´s office has told us that enforcement of this will be done at a minimal level since this is a misdemeanor offense. Now, one could argue the pluses and minuses on whether it should be a more serious offense, but these are misdemeanors that are dealt with by local law enforcement agencies from around the country, and they cannot afford to devote their resources at the IG level because of this reason. The IG tells us that one case alone could cost $800,000.

Second, one of the reasons that debating this amendment today is that the Humane of the United States points out that this vote will be counted

year. The only reason that this item is even on their scorecard is that we have addressed all other of their concerns in this bill. We provided a $437,000 increase for animal welfare, $1.1 million more for regulatory enforcement in the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, and fully funded the enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act in the Food Safety and Inspection Service.

If the sponsors of this amendment were serious about this, programs that the HSUS supported like the ones that I just mentioned are the ones that would be cut to pay for this amendment, but then that would force them to prioritize like the rest of us have to do.

If every Member of the House brought an amendment to the floor just because they did not get every last nickel that they wanted, we would be here all day and we could never get this bill done.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to not vote against this amendment simply because I am suggesting

, but vote against this amendment because of the following statement by an HSUS Vice
said, “The life of an ant and that of any child should be granted equal .”

This led presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), to respond,

As somebody who served in municipal government over the years, this is
came up in terms of activities that were taking place in some of the neighborhoods in my own community, and certainly people who heard about them and who were involved in the community understood that the level of violence and the level of animal cruelty was something that needed public attention.

We should have no tolerance for animal cruelty. We should have no tolerance for a system which degrades these creatures of God. And we also need to understand that, as the honorable chairman pointed out, the observation that was made official concerning the of and children, I do not think that he actually meant to equate the importance of an ant to a child, but what the statement meant to say was that all life here ought to be regarded with some degree of respect and that, in effect, when we try to come forward here and support animal welfare and support the rights of animals to not be treated cruelly, what we are doing here is, in effect, elevating our own humanity.

Like any good politician, Kucinich unsuccessfully tries to spin Michael Fox’s claim that ants and children deserve the same sort of consideration, which is not the same thing as saying that all life should be regarded “with some degree of respect.” Nice try, though, Dennis.

The full text of the debate over the amendment can be found here.

Iceland Resumes Whaling

In August, Iceland resumed limited whaling for “scientific” purposes.

At this summer’s meeting of the International Whaling Commission, Iceland had floated a proposal that would have allowed it to kill more than 200 whales annually for scientific research purposes along the same lines as Japan’s current whaling efforts.

That proposal was soundly rejected. However, when Iceland rejoined the International Whaling Commission a couple years ago, it stipulated that it reserved the right to pursue small-scale scientific research whaling. Coming off the defeat of its proposal for scientific whaling, Iceland informed IWC members in August that it would kill 38 minke whales as part of its research efforts.

The move was widely condemned in anti-whaling nations. U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, for example, said of the move,

We’re extremely disappointed with Iceland’s decision to begin a lethal research whaling program, which anticipates taking 38 minke whales. Although the program is technically legal under the Whaling Convention, we’ve said many times that lethal research on whales is not necessary and the needed scientific data can be obtained by well-established, non-lethal means.

The taking of whales by Iceland will likely trigger a review by the Department of Commerce of Iceland’s lethal scientific whaling process program for possible certification under the Pelly Amendment.

Under the Pelly Amendment, a finding that Iceland’s scientific whaling program is undermining international conservation efforts aimed at sustaining the population of minke whales could result in bans on the importation of goods from Iceland (don’t hold your breath for that to happen, however).

Iceland’s representative to the International Whaling Commission, Stefan Asmundsson, told the Associated Press that his country expected to encounter a lot of opposition to its resumption of whaling,

We knew beforehand there would be countries who would object and we knew that this research was going to cost us a lot of money to carry out. Regardless of these facts, we believe that it is so important that we simply cannot afford not to do it.

There has been some talk of consumer boycotts of products from Iceland, but polls within that country suggest that upwards of two-thirds of the people there support the resumption of whaling.

This could be the precursor to something even bigger. Many observers did not expect Iceland to resume whaling at all until after 2006, when Iceland has said it reserves the right to resume commercial whaling.

If Iceland does decide to resume whaling in 2006, the anti-whaling forces in the IWC will have won a pyrrhic victory. They will have kept the IWC on record as opposing any resumption of commercial whaling, while pushing Iceland and potentially other countries to resume whaling outside of the IWC’s jurisdiction and oversight.

Sources:

PETA Activists Arrested at Zoo Protests

Four activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals were arrested in California and Florida on August 14 while protesting the planned importation of African elephants from Swaziland.

PETA and other groups had unsuccessfully tried to block the importation of 11 elephants from Swaziland that were destined for the Lowry Park zoo in Florida and the San Diego Zoo in California. The elephants will be part of breeding programs at both institutions.

In Tampa, Florida, police arrested three activists. Jayson A. Bayless, 29, of Norfolk, Va., and Valerie Lee Silidker, 28, of Davie, Florida, were arrested on burglary and disorderly conduct charges. Alan Hugh Berger, 57, of Charleston, South Carolina, was arrested on a trespassing charge.

The three PETA activists entered the offices of the zoo and apparently began screaming at the staff members and refused to leave when asked.

In San Diego, meanwhile, Lisa Ann Wathne, 42, of Washington state was arrested on a charge of trespassing after she unsuccessfully (!) tried to chain herself to an office building at the San Diego Zoo.

Sources:

Elephant protest leads to arrest. Tallahassee Democrat, August 15, 2003.

Four PETA members arrested at Tampa, San Diego zoos. Associated Press, August 14, 2003.