Should videos of animals being tortured and killed be protected under the First Amendment, especially when the act is not?

According to an article that ran in the Los Angeles Times on Oct. 6, the Supreme Court heard the case of whether a 1999 law that expressly prohibited the sale and distribution of crush videos, which depicts small animals being crushed to death under a women’s high heel shoe, goes against freedom of speech.

Causing cruelty to animals is illegal. Getting caught video taping said animals being treated cruelly is also illegal. So then why should distributing the video not be illegal as well?

Justice Antonin Scalia believes that the First Amendment prevents the government from limiting any kind of speech or expression, unless it involves sex or obscenity. He also is afraid that the law could prohibit the sale of hunting videos. The problem with that argument is that a man with a gun and a hunting license shooting a deer is a far cry from a kitten being tortured.

These are animals that are killed for a sexual fetish, and no matter how you spin it, they are depicting something that can only be defined as obscene.

Obscenity laws in most states say that in order for something to be truly obscene, and therefore not protected, it needs to lack any serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. So you could theoretically bring forward an “expert” and have them explain how crush videos are culturally relevant works of art, but it would be hard to justify why they have to actually kill something to get to that point.

Child pornography is not protected, because it is evident that a child is being harmed. So if the entire point of the video is another kind of creature being harmed, why is there so much objection to deeming it obscene?

It’s an important question to consider, how far can someone go before they have crossed that thin line.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. asked whether a pay-per-view channel where people are killed hourly should be protected as well.

Let’s go even further here. If crush videos are protected, could we eventually see a magazine called “Smashed Puppy Dog?”