Rescuing animals should never be a crime

Saving a dog from a hot car is a brave act. Would you say the same about freeing chickens from a factory farm?

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CHICKENS gather in the aviary at an animal sanctuary in Acton, Calif.

IMAGINE YOU SEE your neighbor's dog drowning in their backyard pool. You call out for the neighbor and bang on their door, but no one comes.

Their gate is closed, so you unlatch it, enter the backyard, and rescue the dog. Should you go to jail for trespassing on their property? As a matter of common sense, the answer seems clear: No, you shouldn't be punished for performing a good deed. The law even reflects this intuition: A doctrine known as the "necessity defense" allows one to argue that their actions, though otherwise illegal, were justified because they prevented an even greater harm. Further, some would say that, as a moral matter, it would be wrong to see a dog drowning, know that you had the ability to rescue her, and do nothing.

However, following a similar scenario, what if the animal rescued was not a dog in your neighbor's pool, but a chicken or pig in a factory farm? Should the rescuer then be able to raise the necessity defense? Two ongoing cases in California pose this very issue, and the courts are struggling with the analysis. In each case, activists rescued suffering birds from agricultural facilities in Sonoma County, and in each case, the judge denied the activists the opportunity to present the necessity defense to the jury.

These activists should be allowed to raise the necessity defense as it unequivocally applies in cases of animals rescued from agricultural facilities for the same reason it applies to the hypothetical rescue of a dog drowning in your neighbor's pool: The animals were suffering.