Two Recent Federal Court Cases About Exotic Animal Ordinances

This post was authored by Amy Lavine, Esq.

A Nevada federal district court addressed various constitutional claims related to tiger keeping in a 2021 case, Mitchell v. Nye County, 2021 WL 5365773 (D Nev 11/17/21). The court allowed the plaintiffs’ claims for unconstitutional conditions and equal protection to go  forward against the county defendants, but it dismissed their claims against two other tiger owners who allegedly acted in concert with county officials to oppose their attempts to secure  appropriate zoning permits. The plaintiffs failed to allege that these private defendants engaged in joint activity with county officials or were so insinuated in county business as to become “state actors” subject to liability for federal constitutional violations. Their evidence against these defendants consisted primarily of emails sent to county officials, but as the court concluded, “this correspondence at most alleges that [fellow tiger owners] Kukol and Shoemaker provided advice and proposals to Nye County, but this does not allege that they were state actors.” The court also emphasized that protecting the private defendants’ First Amendment speech and petition rights was a “‘significant countervailing reason’ against attributing such activity to the state because ‘[i]f we deemed citizens’ lawful and protected efforts to influence government ‘state action,’ then citizens could be held liable whenever their political activities played a role in government action later determined to have been unconstitutional.'”

The federal district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania also addressed municipal restrictions on exotic animals in a 2021 case, Shriners v. Twp. of Whitemarsh, 2021 WL 3885127 (ED Pa 8/31/21). The case involved an ordinance that banned the display of wild and exotic animals, which was enacted at least partially in response to complaints that had been made about the Shriners’ annual circus. Regardless of township’s possible motivations, the court found that the ordinance was not an unconstitutional bill of attainder because it was written as a generally applicable regulation, rather than specifically targeting the Shriners, and because the ordinance’s maximum penalty of a $1,000 fine and 30 days imprisonment did not amount to “punishment” in the constitutional sense.