The Case of the Overlooked Law: Challenging Animal Confinement Through Forgotten Legislation

Attorneys Will Lowrey (Animal Partisan) and Jessica Blome (Greenfire Law) join Mariann to discuss their battle to use California’s century-old animal protection laws to help dairy calves confined in tiny hutches. Despite having clear evidence that a dairy farm was violating Penal Code Section 597t by denying calves adequate exercise, they encountered a frustrating maze of procedural obstacles that prevented them from obtaining a search warrant under Section 599a.

This episode explores:

• How a 120-year-old California law requiring exercise for confined animals, including farmed animals, is being systematically unenforced
• The procedural barriers that prevent animal advocates from using existing legal tools to help farmed animals
• How courts effectively nullify animal protection laws without legislative input
• How the dairy industry confines calves in violation of California law with impunity
• The creative legal strategies being developed to overcome institutional resistance to animal protection cases

ABOUT OUR GUESTS

Will Lowrey is the founder and Legal Counsel for Animal Partisan, a legal advocacy organization focused on challenging unlawful conduct in animal agriculture and experimentation. Will has engaged in numerous lawsuits, as well as criminal and administrative enforcement actions against the government, industrial agriculture, and research laboratories, including cases involving federal slaughter laws, public records, false advertising, public nuisance, animal cruelty, and others. Prior to his current role, Will worked for another animal protection nonprofit where he divided his time between civil litigation and providing counsel for undercover investigations. Will currently teaches Animal Law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and has also taught at Vermont Law and Graduate School and the University of St. Thomas School of Law.

Jessica Blome, a Shareholder of Greenfire Law, P.C. in Berkeley, California, is an animal, environmental, open government, and land use attorney with nearly 20 years of experience in complex litigation. Jessica represents a wide range of clients from individuals to grassroots organizations to national non-profit organizations in cases involving the status of animals, protection of wildlife, or conservation of the environment under state, federal, and tribal law.

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