Do Animal Rights Trump Their Guardians' Fourth Amendment Protections?

Today, the Supreme Court of Oregon decided State v. Newcomb, an interesting animal neglect/Fourth Amendment case, which raises interesting questions about sentience, ownership, poverty, and state intervention.

The Facts

Newcomb's neighbor complained to the police that Newcomb was neglecting and starving her dog, Juno. A police officer arrived at Newcomb's house and saw Juno "in a near-emaciated condition", with "no fat on his body", "eating at random things in the yard, and * * * trying to vomit", but "nothing was coming up." The officer inquired as to the dog's condition, and Newcomb explained that she had run out of food for the dog, which she bought in small quantities. The officer took custody of Juno and brought him to the Humane Society, where he was found to be in deplorable physical condition due to starvation. The vet took a [warrantless] blood sample--which is at the heart of the controversy here--which found that Juno had no underlying condition explaining his emaciated state except malnutrition.

Newcomb was charged with second-degree animal neglect and moved to suppress the evidence. She claimed the officer had no probable cause to seize Juno. More interestingly, she claimed that, since the dog is no more than property in the eyes of the law--"no different than a folder or a stereo or a vehicle or a boot"--the blood sample was an unreasonable Fourth Amendment search, which violated Newcomb's expectation of privacy. The fact-finding court denied the motion and Newcomb was convicted. At the Oregon Court of Appeals, the decision was reversed with regard to the blood sample. The Supreme Court unanimously reversed, finding for the State and affirming the conviction.

The Decision

The Court reiterated the importance of Fourth Amendment protections in people's "... effects", and proceeded to ask whether it mattered that the "effect" in question was a living animal, rather than an inanimate piece of property. Under Oregon law, dogs are explicitly said to be personal property; but is Juno akin to a search in an opaque container, the contents of which requires probable cause and a warrant? The Court reasoned that not all property was the same for Fourth Amendment purposes, and that the extent of protection of property may be sensitive to the nature of the property, the defendant's relationship to the property, and the circumstances of the government's intrusion into said property.

Relying on State v. Fessenden/Dicke, the Court held that animals are a distinct form of property, worth of protection. The extensive animal welfare legislation is evidence of this intent. These laws reflect the understanding the animals are sentient beings, capable of feeling pain, and while the law does not place them on a par with humans--allowing for their killing and for medical research--it does create special norms.

In the context of humans' Fourth Amendment rights in their nonhuman animal companions, the Court looks to social norms and conventions. For example, if someone walks their dog off-leash down the street, and a well-meaning third party pets the dog, there is no Fourth Amendment violation. However, if said third party suddenly uses a syringe to take a blood sample from the dog--even for the purpose of important research--that would fall outside convention to the point of violating the dog's human's expectation of privacy. 

In this case, Juno's removal from the defendant's dominion was done for the purpose of protecting Juno, who was emaciated and dry-heaving. The vet drew the blood sample for the legitimate purpose of Juno's medical treatment. Juno's blood was part of him--he was not a vessel for the defendant in which to hide things. As the prosecutor said, inside Juno was "more dog".

The limitations Oregon law places on ownership and possessory rights in animals mean that the defendant had no Fourth Amendment rights to override her duty to provide minimal care for the dog. 

Fourth Amendment Thoughts

The takeaway from Newcomb can be read narrowly or broadly. Narrowly, it applies to animals, in situations in which the seizure of the sample is taken primarily for medical reasons. But what happens if things are more complicated? Our local SPCA vet, who treated one of our cats in the summer, told us that, not infrequently, the clinic finds traces of meth in pets (this happens with heroin as well). That this is absolutely horrifying should go without saying (and what an indicator of human as well as animal tragedy). But I wonder: If the vet suspects the animal to have been drugged with meth--which is, of course, an issue of animal welfare, but also an issue clearly involving the owner's criminality--does that change the Fourth Amendment balance?

Moreover: Does the finding that not all "effects" are created alike apply just to animals, or to other distinctions between different "effects"? For example, does ecological damage to plants/trees in one's territory merit more intrusion than damage to non-organic property? I lean toward the idea that, in creating these boundaries, the guideline should be sentience: as many vegan thinkers (including Sherry Colb, Peter Singer, and others) suggest, it makes sense to draw this boundary in the place of the existence of a central nervous system. The Oregon Court did not have the opportunity (and probably the inclination) in this case to go as far as those of us who find animal exploitation for consumption to be a serious moral atrocity, but the rationale--being sentient, feeling suffering--holds true for this context as well.

Extra-Legal Issues 1: Poverty, Animals, and Protectionism

It's not difficult to read between the lines in Newcomb, even though the Court doesn't really do that. Newcomb said to the police officer that she fed the dog WinCo food bought in small packages. WinCo is a low-grade kibble that sells in bulk at Costco, chock-full of grains, chemicals, and artificial fillers. It's telling that the defendant did not buy the kibble in bulk, but rather in small packages: poor people can't afford to spend on bulk and reap the savings, which is true for every product. As Yesim Orhun and Mike Palazzolo found in a study based on Nielsen data, frugality is hard to afford. 

Hastings is located in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood, which is a window into the lives of people ravaged by extreme poverty. We frequently see folks who live in the streets with pets, which almost always seem groomed, well-fed, and very much loved. But since homeless people's lives, by their very nature, are exposed to the eyes of strangers, the ability to detect animal welfare and neglect is heightened, to the point that the police might intervene more frequently than when it gets reports of neglect in houses. Obviously, Newcomb was not homeless. But the reason she provided for the dog's emaciated condition is very telling, and might also explain the police's zealousness in following up on the complaint.

Don't get me wrong: I think the court's decision is 100% correct. The rights of an animal that is mistreated should trump the "ownership" rights of whoever owns him or her, regardless of social class. But I think it does raise questions as to whether we enforce these laws equitably, and whether we should develop means to report and expose animal abuse and neglect in other settings.

Extra-Legal Issues 2: The Ethics of Regarding Animals as Property

Newcomb has been hailed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund as a "win for all animals" (I just got an email from them; if you'd like to support their important work on Oregon law and elsewhere, click here.) But it does little to shake the solid foundation of animal status as property in U.S. law. Which begs the question: if the only way to guarantee the safety and well-being of companion animals, under a property law scheme, is to relax a bit the definition of property--namely, to regard them as a "special category of property"--does that raise a question as to the ethics of animal ownership at all?

In Run, Spot, Run: The Ethics of Keeping Pets, bioethicist Jessica Pierce challenges the welfarist and anthropocentric views supporting pet keeping, raising the question whether pet ownership, in itself, is ethical, and if so, whether some species should never be kept as pets. Individual animals' lives are saved through the framework of ownership, but they are also curtailed; which of the two factors should guide our legal regime? And, assuming that some domestic animals would not exist if we weren't raising them to serve us--as consumer products or as company--is it ethical to keep their status as it is to propagate the species? The debate over ecocentrism and biocentrism comes to mind. 

The Oregon Supreme Court decided this case correctly within the existing legal framework. But it is up to us to question the logic of this framework, or to imagine alternative frameworks in which sentient beings do not belong in the property category.