Court Opinion

ID: 9574504
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:05:36.377266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:44:38.823281
License: Public Domain

*236COWEN, Circuit Judge,
dissenting with whom FUENTES and FISHER, Circuit Judges join.
The majority today declares that the Government can have no compelling interest in protecting animals from intentional and wanton acts of physical harm, and in doing so invalidates as unconstitutional a federal statute targeting the distribution and trafficking of depictions of these senseless acts of animal cruelty. Because we cannot agree, in light of the overwhelming body of law across the nation aimed at eradicating animal abuse, that the Government’s interest in ensuring the humane treatment of animals is anything less than of paramount importance, and because we conclude the speech prohibited by 18 U.S.C. § 48 to be of such minimal socially redeeming value that its restriction may be affected consistent with the First Amendment, we respectfully dissent.
I.
In the seminal case Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942), the Supreme Court articulated the fundamental limits of the First Amendment’s protections:There are certain well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the libelous, and the insulting or “fighting” words — those which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace. It has been well observed that such utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.
Id. at 571-72, 62 S.Ct. 766 (footnotes omitted) (emphasis added). It is undisputed that the speech at issue in this case does not fit within one of the traditionally unprotected 17 classes. However, as even the majority agrees, that these categories may be supplemented is beyond dispute. Most recently, the Supreme Court in New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 102 S.Ct. 3348, 73 L.Ed.2d 1113 (1982) did just this, when it recognized child pornography as an additional category of unprotected speech.
The Supreme Court has provided us with two beacons to guide our inquiry into whether depictions of animal cruelty should be recognized as beyond the reach of the First Amendment. First, the Supreme Court has consistently reaffirmed that the Government may, consistent with the Constitution, restrict certain types of speech when the social value of the speech is so minimal as to be plainly outweighed by the Government’s compelling interest in its regulation. See, e.g., Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 358-59, 123 S.Ct. *2371536, 155 L.Ed.2d 535 (2003) (citing Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 571-72, 62 S.Ct. 766); R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 382-83, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992) (quoting Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572, 62 S.Ct. 766).18 Second, in Ferber, the Court articulated four critical considerations demonstrating the inextricable connection necessary between the evil sought to be prevented and the speech sought to be proscribed sufficient to render an entire category of speech unprotected. Because depictions of animal cruelty possess the integral characteristics of unprotected speech when considered under these precedents, we conclude that it escapes First Amendment protection.
a.
In discussing the contours of permissible content-based regulations, the Supreme Court has explained speech may be restricted when its “utterances are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.” Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572, 62 S.Ct. 766. The Court reiterated this statement in Ferber: “[I]t is not rare that a content-based classification of speech has been accepted because it may be appropriately generalized that within the confines of the given classification, the evil to be restricted so overwhelmingly outweighs the expressive interests, if any, at stake, that no process of case-by-case adjudication is required.” 458 U.S. at 763-64, 102 S.Ct. 3348; R.A.V., 505 U.S. at 382-83, 112 S.Ct. 2538 (“From 1791 to the present, [] our society, like other free but civilized societies, has permitted restrictions upon the content of speech in a few limited areas, which are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality”) (internal quotations omitted). Justice Brennan, in his concurrence in Ferber, isolated the salient features: “[T]he limited classes of speech, the suppression of which does not raise serious First Amendment concerns, have two attributes. They are of exceedingly ‘slight social value,’ and the State has a compelling interest in their regulation.” Id. at 776, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (Brennan, J., concurring). These statements establish the constitutional floor: for speech to be unprotected, at a bare minimum, its value must be plainly outweighed by the Government’s asserted interest. The speech in this case shares those repeatedly emphasized features.
1.
We agree with the Government that its interest in preventing animal cruelty is compelling.19 The importance of this in*238terest is readily apparent from the expansive regulatory framework that has been developed by state and federal legislatures to address the problem. These laws serve to protect not only the animals, but also the individuals who would commit the cruelty, and more generally, the morals of society.
Our nation’s aversion to animal cruelty is deep-seated. Laws prohibiting cruelty to animals have existed in this country since 1641, when the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony enacted a law entitled “Off the Bruite Creature,” which stated: “No man shall exercise any Tirranny or Crueltie towards any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man’s use.” Emily Stewart Leavitt, Animals and Their Legal Rights: A Survey of American Laws from 16H to 1970 13 (Animal Welfare Institute 1970). In 1828, the first modern animal cruelty law was enacted in New York, and by 1913 every state had such a law. Id. at 17; see also Pamela D. Frasch et ah, State Animal Anti-Cruelty Statutes: An Overview, 5 Animal L. 69 (1999) (examining current state of anti-cruelty laws throughout the country). As one early jurist stated: “[L]aws, and the enforcement or observance of laws, for the protection of dumb brutes from cruelty, are, in my judgment, among the best evidences of the justice and benevolence of men.” Stephens v. State, 65 Miss. 329, 3 So. 458, 458 (1888). These anti-cruelty laws have continued to evolve and proliferate. In 1867, New York enacted a law outlawing animal fighting, David Favre & Vivien Tsang, The Development of Anti-Cruelty Laws During the 1800’s, 1993 Det. C.L.Rev. 1, 16 (1993); and today, dogfight-ing is prohibited in all the fifty states, (App. at 155-57). The fact that many states have taken the additional step of empowering local humane societies to directly enforce anti-cruelty laws further highlights the ardor with which our society seeks to prevent cruelty. See, e.g., 18 Pa. Cons.Stat. § 5511(i) (“An agent of any society or association for the prevention of cruelty to animals, incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth, shall have the same powers to initiate criminal proceedings provided for police officers by the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure. An agent of any society or association for the prevention of cruelty to animals, incorporated under the laws of this Commonwealth, shall have standing to request any court of competent jurisdiction to enjoin any violation of this section.”).
Congress has also regularly enacted laws that protect animals from maltreatment, including, inter alia, laws that: proscribe animal fighting, 7 U.S.C. § 2156; require that livestock be slaughtered humanely, 7 U.S.C. § 1901; help establish humane guidelines governing the purchase, sale, and handling of animals, 7 U.S.C. § 2142; create standards to protect pets in pounds and shelters, 7 U.S.C. § 2158; prevent the “cruel and inhumane” soring20 of horses, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1821-*2391831; protect free-roaming horses and burros from capture, branding, harassment, and death, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1331-1340; help conserve endangered species, 16 U.S.C. §§ 1531^13; and protect marine mammals, 16 U.S.C. § § 1361-1421(h). The very statute before us illustrates Congress’s solicitude for animal welfare. This interest is now so interwoven into the fabric of society that the Internal Revenue Code grants tax-exempt status to organizations striving to prevent cruelty to animals. See 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(3).
These statutes are animated by concerns for animals, the aspirant abuser, and the public in general. It cannot be insignificant, as even the majority acknowledges, see Majority Op., supra at 223 n. 4, that the conduct underlying the depictions at hand is subject to criminal penalties in every state in the nation. This overwhelming body of law reflects the “widespread belief that animals, as living things, are entitled to certain minimal standards of treatment by humans,” H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 4 (1999), and is powerful evidence of the importance of the governmental interest at stake. Indeed, the Supreme Court often cites to the prevalence of nationwide legislation on a matter as support for its conclusion that the asserted interest is sufficiently important as to be deemed compelling. See, e.g., Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 118, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) (“There can be little doubt ... that the State has a compelling interest in ensuring that victims of crime are compensated by those who harm them. Every State has a body of tort law serving exactly this interest.”); Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609, 624-25, 104 S.Ct. 3244, 82 L.Ed.2d 462 (1984) (discussing various state laws prohibiting public accommodation discrimination as evidence of government’s compelling interest in ensuring equal access); Ferber, 458 U.S. at 758, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (“We shall not second-guess [the] legislative judgment [that preventing child exploitation and abuse is a compelling governmental objective] ... Suffice it to say that virtually all of the States and the United States have passed legislation proscribing the production of or otherwise combating ‘child pornography.’ ”); see also Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476, 484-85, 77 S.Ct. 1304, 1 L.Ed.2d 1498 (1957) (concluding obscenity is “utterly without redeeming social importance” based on “the universal judgment that obscenity should be restrained, [as] reflected in the international agreement of over 50 nations, in the obscenity laws of all of the 48 States, and in the 20 obscenity laws enacted by the Congress from 1842 to 1956”) (internal footnotes omitted).
Less obvious, but no less important, cruelty to animals is a form of antisocial behavior that erodes public mores and can have a deleterious effect on the individual inflicting the harm. Early jurists accepted this contention implicitly. See Broadway v. Am. Soc’y for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 15 Abb.Pr.N.S. 51 (N.Y.1873) (“[The anti-cruelty statute] truly has its origin in the intent to save a just standard of humane feeling from being debased by pernicious effects of bad example — the human heart from being hardened by public and frequent exhibitions of cruelty to dumb creatures, committed to the care and which were created for the beneficial use of man.”); Commonwealth v. Turner, 145 Mass. 296, 14 N.E. 130, 132 (1887) (“The offense is against the public morals, which the commission of cruel and barbarous *240acts tends to corrupt.”); Waters v. People, 23 Colo. 33, 46 P. 112, 113 (1896) (“[The anti-cruelty statutes’] aim is not only to protect these animals, but to conserve public morals, both of which are undoubtedly proper subjects of legislation.”). And empirical evidence now bears out that understanding. See H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 4 (“the increasing body of research which suggests that humans who kill or abuse others often do so as the culmination of a long pattern of abuse, which often begins with the torture and killing of animals”); Brief for the Humane Society of the United States as Amicus Curiae in support of Appellee, at 4 n. 10 (citation to various psychological studies discussing link between animal abuse and violent crime). These multi-layered sub-interests elucidate why preventing animal cruelty is so crucial.
Our nation has extended solicitude to animals from an early date, and has now established a rich tapestry of laws protecting animals from the cruelty we so abhor. This interest has nested itself so deeply into the core of our society — because the interest protects the animals themselves, humans, and public mores — that it warrants being labeled compelling.
Notwithstanding the majority’s assertion, the Supreme Court in no way suggested to the contrary in Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Incorporated v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520, 113 S.Ct. 2217, 124 L.Ed.2d 472 (1993). In Lukumi, a church practicing the Santería faith challenged city ordinances that prohibited its ritual slaughter of animals. Id. at 525-28, 113 S.Ct. 2217. Although the state contended that the ordinances were motivated, inter alia, by the government’s interest in preventing cruelty to animals, the Supreme Court struck down the ordinances. However, the ordinances there failed not because preventing cruelty to animals was not a sufficiently paramount interest to be deemed compelling; rather, the Court found that the ordinances were so riddled with exceptions exempting all other killings except those practiced by Santería adherents betrayed that the real rationale behind the prohibitions was an unconstitutional suppression of religion. See, e.g., id. at 536, 113 S.Ct. 2217 (noting the numerous exemptions for kosher and for other forms of animal killings, concluding “the burden of the ordinance, in practical terms, falls on Santería adherents but almost no others”); id. at 542, 113 S.Ct. 2217 (legislative history “discloses the object of the ordinances to target animal sacrifice by Santería worshippers because of its religious motivation”). Indeed, Justice Blackmun was explicit in rejecting the majority’s instant characterization of the decision:
A harder case would be presented if petitioners were requesting an exemption from a generally applicable anti-cruelty law. The result in the case before the Court today, and the fact that every Member of the Court concurs in that result, does not necessarily reflect this Court’s views of the strength of a State’s interest in prohibiting cruelty to animals. This case does not present, and I therefore decline to reach, the question whether the Free Exercise Clause would require a religious exemption from a law that sincerely pursued the goal of protecting animals from cruel treatment.
Id. at 580, 113 S.Ct. 2217 (Blackmun, J., concurring) (emphasis added). Thus, Lu-kumi does not contradict our conclusion that preventing animal cruelty is a compelling interest.21
*241Furthermore, insofar as we understand the majority to suggest that Congress cannot have a compelling interest to advance a goal when the subject of the regulation is not directly within its constitutional sphere of legislative authority, we must disagree with this novel proposition. A congressional act may certainly significantly advance a governmental interest of paramount significance, whether or not it does so directly. For example, Congress has sought to protect children from physical harm by criminalizing the distribution of child pornography, see 18 U.S.C. § 2252, and to ensure the public’s health and general welfare by enacting laws proscribing narcotics trafficking, see 21 U.S.C. § 201 et seq. That the states have already comprehensively criminalized child abuse and drug distribution in no way relegates the federal government’s interests in doing the same to a subordinate level; the means through which Congress seeks to advance these interests — that is, pursuant to its Commerce Clause authority — has no bearing on the uncontroversial propositions that the interests implicated are nevertheless ones of the most paramount order. In short, whether a governmental interest is compelling does not, in our view, depend on the extent of the particular government’s constitutional authority to directly regulate the core conduct at issue. See United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 748-50, 107 S.Ct. 2095, 95 L.Ed.2d 697 (1987) (upholding the Bail Reform Act based on the federal government’s compelling interest in public safety, citing to cases establishing the individual states’s interests in the same). Applied to this case, we do not think it proper for the majority to so narrowly redefine the Government’s interest under section 48 — as implicating only the evils arising from the under-enforcement of state animal cruelty statutes — so as to diminish the importance of the Government’s posited goals.
Nor do we find that section 48 is sufficiently under-inclusive as to undercut the Government’s claim of the significance of its interest. Cf. The Florida Star v. B.J.F., 491 U.S. 524, 541-42, 109 S.Ct. 2603, 105 L.Ed.2d 443 (1989) (Scalia, J., concurring) (“a law cannot be regarded as protecting an interest ‘of the highest order’ ... when it leaves appreciable damage to that supposedly vital interest un-prohibited”). Where the allegedly ignored evils are at the fringes of Congress’s legislative authority, that section 48 does not criminalize the personal possession of depictions of animal cruelty or the intrastate trafficking of such materials does not render it impermissibly under-inclusive.22 On *242the contrary, Congress could have reasonably decided to focus its attention on purely interstate conduct, lest enforcement efforts be hampered by costly constitutional litigation. This is especially so in light of the indication that the materials Congress sought to prohibit “were almost exclusively distributed for sale through interstate or foreign commerce.” H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 3 (summarizing witness testimony on nature of commercial market for depictions of animal cruelty). We thus find no under-inclusion in section 48 sufficient to east doubt on the Government’s asserted interest here. Cf. Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 543, 113 S.Ct. 2217 (invalidating ordinances upon finding “[t]he underinclusion [ ] substantial, not inconsequential” where “[d]espite the city’s proffered interest in preventing cruelty to animals, the ordinances are drafted with care to forbid few killings but those occasioned by religious sacrifice”).23
2.
Next, we find that the depictions of animal cruelty prohibited by section 48 also satisfy the second part of the fundamental First Amendment balancing inquiry be-eause they have little or no social value. This is guaranteed by the very terms of the statute, which excepts speech that has “serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value” from its reach. 18 U.S.C. § 48(b). While this exception removes the possibility of the statute reaching serious works, we consider it unlikely that visual depictions of animal cruelty will often constitute an important and necessary part of a literary performance, a scientific or educational work, or political discourse. See Ferber, 458 U.S. at 762-63, 102 S.Ct. 3348. Nor do we see any reason why, if some serious work were to demand a depiction of animal cruelty, either the cruelty or the animal could not be simulated. See id. at 763, 102 S.Ct. 3348. Here, we have little trouble concluding that the depictions outlawed by section 48, by and large, can only have value to those with a morbid fascination with suffering and thus are of only de minimis value. See H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 5 (“The committee believes that no reasonable person would find any redeeming value in the material proscribed by [18 U.S.C. § 48]”).
*243It is true, as a matter of First Amendment law, that the Government may not proscribe constitutionally protected speech merely by limiting its regulation to a subset of that speech devoid of serious value. On the other hand, however, the Supreme Court has made clear that a category of constitutionally unprotected speech may be regulated as long as the regulations do not extend to portions of speech within that category with “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15, 24, 93 S.Ct. 2607, 37 L.Ed.2d 419 (1973). Like in the case of obscenity, the relevant analytical starting point here is with the legislative judgment that the category of speech at issue — depictions of animals being intentionally tortured and killed — is of such minimal redeeming value as to render it unworthy of First Amendment protection. But acknowledging that certain subsets of these materials may have value for “religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic” purposes, 18 U.S.C. § 48(b), Congress has circumscribed the scope of its regulation to only this category’s plainly unprotected portions. Viewed in this light, section 48 is nothing more than an analogous codification of the Miller v. California framework, tailored to the animal cruelty context. Thus, the analytical significance of the exceptions clause at issue here is not, as the majority suggests, an attempt to “constitutionalize” an otherwise unconstitutional restriction of protected speech; rather, it merely establishes the outer bounds for the permissible regulation of a category of otherwise unprotected speech, not unlike what the Supreme Court did in Miller.
We find that section 48 outlaws depictions that “are no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social interest in order and morality.” Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572, 62 S.Ct. 766. The speech outlawed by the statute at issue shares the salient characteristics of the other recognized categories of unprotected speech, and thus falls within the heartland of speech that may be proscribed based on its content. Having satisfied this threshold inquiry, we thus turn to a discussion of the Ferber considerations.
b.
We read Ferber, at its core, to stand for the narrow proposition that a category of speech may be constitutionally restricted where it depicts — and thus necessarily requires — -the intentional infliction of physical harm on a class of especially vulnerable victims in violation of law, where the distribution of such depictions spurs their production but laws prohibiting the underlying acts are woefully under-enforced, and where the speech’s social value is so de minimus as to be outweighed by the important governmental goal of protecting the victims. We find that the depictions of animal cruelty proscribed by section 48 possesses these essential attributes.24
In Ferber, the Supreme Court justified the prohibition of child pornography based on four grounds: (1) “a State’s interest in *244safeguarding the physical and psychological well-being of a minor is compelling,” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 756-57, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (internal quotation marks omitted); (2) “[t]he distribution of photographs and films depicting sexual activity by juveniles is intrinsically related to the sexual abuse of children,” id. at 759, 102 S.Ct. 3348; (3) “[t]he advertising and selling of child pornography provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of [child pornography],” id. at 761, 102 S.Ct. 3348; and (4) “[t]he value of permitting live performances and photographic reproductions of children engaged in lewd sexual conduct is exceedingly modest, if not de minimis,” id. at 762, 102 S.Ct. 3348. We elaborate each of these four parts below and detail how depictions of animal cruelty implicate the same interests.
First, the Supreme Court recognized the state’s interest in protecting minors as compelling. Id. at 756-57, 102 S.Ct. 3348. As discussed at length above, we find preventing animal cruelty to also be a governmental interest of the most paramount importance. See supra section I.a.l.
Second, the Supreme Court explained that child pornography was an unprotected form of speech because of the intrinsic relationship between the distribution of child pornography and the sexual abuse of children, which it found existed in at least two ways. Ferber, 458 U.S. at 759, 102 S.Ct. 3348. First, child pornography materials create a lasting record of the child abuse, and as the materials are distributed, the harm to the child is exacerbated, id., and second, because of the daunting obstacles in prosecuting the “low-profile, clandestine industry” responsible for the production of child pornography, targeting the more-visible distribution network was “the most expeditious if not the only practical method” of ensuring enforcement, id. at 760, 102 S.Ct. 3348.
The speech at issue here is also intrinsically related to the underlying crime of animal cruelty, most clearly because its creation is also predicated on a violation of criminal law. Implicated by the depictions at hand is not the mere prospect of future crime, nor is the instant proscription premised on society’s disapproval of the views underlying the depictions. Cf. Texas v. Johnson, 491 U.S. 397, 414, 109 S.Ct. 2533, 105 L.Ed.2d 342 (1989) (“the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable”). Unlike the virtual child pornography statute invalidated in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the harm the Government is seeking to prevent here depends not “upon some unquantified potential for subsequent criminal acts” purportedly flowing from the prohibited depictions, 535 U.S. 234, 250, 122 S.Ct. 1389, 152 L.Ed.2d 403 (2002), but arises directly and necessarily from the creation of the depictions itself.
In Ferber, the Supreme Court found an inextricable connection between child pornography and the underlying abuse based in part on its observation that the pornography’s deleterious and stigmatizing effects transcend the single instance of abuse depicted. 458 U.S. at 759 n. 10, 102 S.Ct. 3348. We do not quarrel with the majority’s statement that it would be difficult to directly analogize this ongoing psychological harm suffered by child abuse victims to that of animals. However, even a cursory consideration of well-documented circumstances surrounding animal abuse, such as those present in the dog-fighting context, counsels toward the conclusion that the harms suffered by abused animals also extend far beyond that directly resulting from the single abusive act depicted. Indeed, dogs that are forced to *245fight are commonly the subjects of brutality and cruelty for the entire span of their fives: prior to the fights, they are intentionally emotionally abused and physically tortured in order to predispose them to violence; after the fights, dogs that do not perform well are not infrequently left to die untreated from their injuries or are simply executed. See generally Brief for the Humane Society of the United States as Amicus Curiae, at 2-3 (citing various authorities on the treatment of dogs involved in dogfighting). Further, the creation of the depictions at issue often spells the actual end of the fives of the animals involved. See H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 2 (describing crush videos as “videotapes ... depicting [] small animals being slowly crushed to death”); see also H.R.Rep. No. 94-801, at 9 (1976) (“Dog fighting itself is a grisly business in which two dogs either trained specifically for the purpose or maddened by drugs and abuse are set upon one another and required to fight, usually to the death of at least one and frequently both animals.”). Thus, while animals may not suffer psychological harm merely because of the continued existence of the depictions as permanent records of their abuse, that significant attendant harms (both leading up to the abuse and following from it) emanate from the single instance of depicted cruelty nevertheless supports our finding here that the prohibited depictions are intrinsically finked to the underlying abuse.
In addition, law enforcement officials face similar difficulties in prosecuting the creation of animal cruelty depictions as they do in policing child pornography, and Congress could have thus reasonably concluded that targeting the distributors would be the most effective way of drying up the animal-cruelty depictions market. In particular, police struggle to prosecute those involved in crush videos because the videos are generally created by a bare-boned, clandestine staff; the woman doing the crushing is filmed in a manner that shields her identity, and the location of the action is imperceptible. See H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 3. Similarly, individuals involved in dogfights are also elaborately insulated from law enforcement. See App. at 476-77 (expert witness describing the difficulty of infiltrating a dogfighting group where each member knows the others); see also Susan E. Davis, Blood Sport: Dog Fighting Is Big Business in California, and Just About Impossible to Stop, 17 Cal. Law. 44, 84 (1997) (explaining the difficulties of gaining access to dogfighting rings, as organizers often require newcomers to fight a dog before accepting that person). Indeed, in the videos at issue in this case, while the faces of the spectators of the dogfights taking place in Japan were sometimes clearly pictured (e.g., in “Japan Pit Fights”), Stevens himself stated in “Pick-A-Winna” that he purposefully edited out the faces of the handlers involved in the fights occurring in the United States.25 Therefore, we must disagree with the majority’s characterization of the Government’s claims pertaining to the difficulties in the enforcement of state animal cruelty statutes as “empirically inaccurate.” As is evident in the record before us, the same policing concerns that necessitated a focus on the more-visible distribution network in Ferber are present in this case. Accordingly, we conclude that the creation and distribution of depictions of animal cruelty is intrinsically related to animal cruelty so as to weigh in favor of its prohibition.
*246Third, the Supreme Court held in Ferber that the advertising and sale of child pornography must be targeted since they “provide an economic motive for and are thus an integral part of the production of such materials.” 458 U.S. at 761, 102 S.Ct. 3348. Because the First Amendment does not protect speech that forms an integral part of a criminal violation, and because of the glaring under-enforcement of the underlying laws prohibiting the production of child pornography, the Ferber Court concluded that these considerations counseled towards permitting regulation of the pornographic materials. Id. at 762, 102 S.Ct. 3348.
These factors are self-evidently present in the instant case. As discussed, substantial obstacles exist in effectively detecting and prosecuting those directly involved in the creation of animal cruelty depictions. Furthermore, the record here amply demonstrates that a thriving market exists for depictions of animal cruelty: Crush videos and dogfighting videos are advertised and sold in copious amounts over the internet and through magazines.26 See 145 Cong. Rec. S15220-03 (1999) (noting that there are over 2,000 crush-video titles available in the marketplace, priced from $15 to $300); App. at 447-49 (witness explaining that the Sporting Dog Journal reports results of illegal dogfights and runs advertisements for dogfighting videos); PSR 6 (showing that Stevens had sold almost 700 videos depicting dogfights in two-and-a-half years for which he earned over $20,000). This evidence establishes the existence of a lucrative market for depictions of animal cruelty, which in turn provides a powerful incentive to individuals to create videos depicting animal cruelty.
In our view, the presence of an economic motive driving the production of depictions of animals being tortured or killed is perhaps the critical consideration that distinguishes the speech at issue here from ordinary depictions of criminal activities. A decision here allowing prohibition of the distribution of depictions of animal abuse will no more threaten the examples of speech posited by Stevens — crime scene photographs and surveillance videos — than did the Supreme Court’s decision in Ferber. Stevens’s examples are easily distinguishable from the speech prohibited by section 48 as they plainly have more than de minimis value; crime scene photographs, for instance, are eminently useful to police officers. Furthermore, most critically, no commercial market exists for depictions of run-of-the-mill criminal activities so as to incentivize the commission of the underlying illegal acts; there thus is little danger that individuals will be directly motivated to physically harm others in order to create depictions of the same solely in hopes of commercial gain.
Fourth, the Supreme Court justified its restriction in Ferber on the fact that the value of child pornography is de minimis. 458 U.S. at 762, 102 S.Ct. 3348. The Court considered it unlikely that such depictions would be an important or necessary part of scientific, literary, or educational works, and in the off-chance that such was necessary, they could simply be simulated. Id. at 762-63, 102 S.Ct. 3348. While we have already articulated our reasons for concluding that depictions of animal cruelty are of de minimis value, see supra section *247I.a.2, we stress here that this case is even clearer than that in Ferber because section 48, unlike the statute at issue in Ferber, already expressly excludes depictions that have any serious value. Thus, there is simply no potential that the present statute will reach any work that plays an important role in the world of ideas.
The speech at issue in this case possesses the essential attributes of unprotected speech identified generally in Chaplinsky and of child pornography as discussed in Ferber. To reiterate, the Government has a compelling interest in eradicating animal cruelty, depictions of animal cruelty are intrinsically related to the underlying animal cruelty, the market for videos of animal cruelty incentivizes the commission of acts of animal cruelty, and such depictions are of de minimis value. In reaching this decision, however, we emphasize that we have before us, not a statute broadly purporting to ban all depictions of criminal acts, but merely one prohibiting depictions of a narrow subclass of depraved acts committed against an uniquely vulnerable and helpless class of victims. As such, we deem it unlikely that our ruling as to the constitutionality of the latter would have broad negative repercussions to First Amendment freedoms. Accordingly, because Congress may proscribe depictions of animal cruelty without running afoul of the First Amendment, we would reject Stevens’s challenge to the constitutional validity of 18 U.S.C. § 48.
II.
Section 48 is also not unconstitutionally overbroad. The overbreadth doctrine is designed to abate the “possibility that protected speech of others may be muted and perceived grievances left to fester because of the possible inhibitory effects of overly broad statutes.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 93 S.Ct. 2908, 37 L.Ed.2d 830 (1973). Overbreadth is fundamentally concerned with striking a delicate balance between the “competing social costs” of deterring people from engaging in constitutionally protected conduct and of ensuring that certain criminal behavior is regulated. United States v. Williams, — U.S. -, 128 S.Ct. 1830, 1838, 170 L.Ed.2d 650 (2008). Resort to this doctrine is “strong medicine that is not to be casually employed.” Id. (quoting Los Angeles Police Dep’t. v. United Reporting Publishing Corp., 528 U.S. 32, 39, 120 S.Ct. 483, 145 L.Ed.2d 451 (1999)) (internal quotations omitted).
As the Supreme Court recently emphasized: “In order to maintain an appropriate balance, we have vigorously enforced the requirement that a statute’s over-breadth be substantial, not only in an absolute sense, but also relative to the statute’s plainly legitimate sweep.” Id. (emphasis in original). Courts should invalidate a statute on overbreadth grounds only when the law “reaches a substantial number of impermissible applications,” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 772, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (emphasis added). Thus, “[t]he mere fact that one can conceive of some impermissible applications of a statute is not sufficient to render it susceptible to an over-breadth challenge.” Williams, 128 S.Ct. at 1844 (quoting Members of City Council of L.A. v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 800, 104 S.Ct. 2118, 80 L.Ed.2d 772 (1984)). Rather, “there must be a realistic danger that the statute itself will significantly compromise recognized First Amendment protections of parties not before the Court for it to be facially challenged on overbreadth grounds.” Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. at 801, 104 S.Ct. 2118. There is no such substantial overbreadth here.
Stevens first argues that the statute is overbroad because it criminalizes de*248pictions of conduct that was not illegal when or where it occurred, such as videos of dogfights in Japan, where dogfighting is legal, or videos that were produced in the United States before dogfighting was outlawed. However, such speech is within the statute’s legitimate scope. In Ferber, the Court held that a “State is not barred by the First Amendment from prohibiting the distribution of unprotected materials produced outside the State,” 458 U.S. at 765-66, 102 S.Ct. 3348, because “the maintenance of the market itself ‘leaves open the financial conduit by which the production of such material is funded and materially increases the risk that [local] children will be injured,”’ id. at 766 n. 19, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (quoting People v. Ferber, 52 N.Y.2d 674, 439 N.Y.S.2d 863, 422 N.E.2d 523, 531 (1981) (Jasen, J., dissenting)); see also 18 U.S.C. § 2252A (federal child pornography statute explicitly reaches works produced overseas). The same interests are implicated here: so long as the industry peddling depictions of animal cruelty survives, there remains a financial incentive to create more videos of animal cruelty within this country. The state of the law numerous years ago in this country, or that in foreign jurisdictions is simply irrelevant to this consideration. The Government may legitimately endeavor to quash the entire industry in all its manifestations. Furthermore, because the difficulty in determining where or when the underlying acts of animal cruelty occurred was part of Congress’s motivation for enacting section 48 in the first place, see H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 2, excepting depictions that occurred at a time or in a place where the conduct was not illegal would essentially gut the instant statute.
Stevens also argues that the statute is overbroad because it reaches individuals who took no part in the underlying conduct. This argument is likewise foreclosed by Ferber, where the Court ruled that it was permissible for the government to annihilate the child pornography market at all levels, which included penalizing distributors. 458 U.S. at 759-60, 102 S.Ct. 3348. Similarly, for the Government to extinguish the market for depictions of animal cruelty, it must be allowed to attack its most visible apparatus — the commercial distribution network.
Stevens’s final argument that the statute is overbroad because it could extend to technical violations of hunting and fishing statutes is also unpersuasive. The Supreme Court recently rejected similar contentions in upholding 18 U.S.C. § 2252A(a)(3)(B) — a federal statute criminalizing the promotion and possession of child pornography — against an over-breadth challenge. Williams, 128 S.Ct. at 1843-45. While acknowledging that the plain language of the statute could be read to criminalize the act of turning child pornography over to law enforcement, the Court nevertheless stated that as it was unaware of any prosecutions for such conduct under analogous state statutes, there was simply no real threat that such activity would be deterred by the federal prohibition. Id. at 1843-14. Furthermore, that the statute could also apply to documentary footage of foreign war atrocities did not render it facially unconstitutional; even if such an application violated the First Amendment, “the existence of that exception would not establish that the statute is substantially overbroad.” Id. at 1844 (emphasis in original).
Turning to the statute at hand, we are unable to imagine the circumstances that would have to coalesce for such a video to come within the reaches of section 48, especially in light of its exceptions clause. See id. at 1843 (remarking the examples posited “demonstrates nothing so forcefully as the tendency of our overbreadth doctrine to summon forth an endless stream *249of fanciful hypotheticals”). In short, there is simply no “realistic danger” that the challenged statute will deter such depictions. Id. at 1844 (quoting New York State Club Assn., Inc. v. City of New York, 487 U.S. 1, 11, 108 S.Ct. 2225, 101 L.Ed.2d 1 (1988)). Moreover, even if technical violations were to slip through the section 48(b) bulwark, we are confident that they would amount to no more than a “tiny fraction” of the depictions subject to the statute, which thus may “be cured through case-by-case analysis of the fact situations to which its sanctions, assertedly, may not be applied.” Ferber, 458 U.S. at 773-74, 102 S.Ct. 3348 (quoting Broadrick, 413 U.S. at 615-616, 93 S.Ct. 2908). Accordingly, section 48 is not substantially over-broad.
III.
Finally, Stevens contends that the statute is unconstitutionally vague. A statute is void on vagueness grounds if it: (1) “fails to provide people of ordinary intelligence a reasonable opportunity to understand what conduct it prohibits”; or (2) “authorizes or even encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.” Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 732, 120 S.Ct. 2480, 147 L.Ed.2d 597 (2000). Section 48 is not unconstitutionally vague under either standard.
Stevens’s primary argument, that the statute is necessarily vague because the definition of “depiction of animal cruelty” is predicated on state law is unavailing. A federal statute is not rendered unconstitutionally vague merely because it incorporates state law; to the contrary, such is a legitimate drafting technique frequently utilized by Congress. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 922 (prohibiting selling “firearm to any person in any State where the purchase or possession by such person of such firearm would be in violation of any State law”); 18 U.S.C. § 1202(b) (criminalizing the transfer of proceeds from any kidnapping punishable under state law). Not surprisingly, courts consistently reject due process challenges premised on incorporation grounds. See, e.g., United States v. Iverson, 162 F.3d 1015, 1021 (9th Cir.1998) (“a statute is not unconstitutionally vague merely because it incorporates other provisions by reference; a reasonable person of ordinary intelligence would consult the incorporated provisions”); United States v. Tripp, 782 F.2d 38, 42 (6th Cir.1986) (“[n]or is there any constitutional objection to a criminal statute that incorporates state law for purposes of defining illegal conduct”); United States v. Morrison, 531 F.2d 1089, 1093 (1st Cir.1976) (same).
Stevens’s next contention is that section 48 is void-for-vagueness because the word “animal” is defined differently in different states. We reject this argument as plainly against the weight of legal authority. See, e.g., Tripp, 782 F.2d at 42 (federal statute does not violate due process in incorporating state laws “even if the result is that conduct that is lawful under the federal statute in one state is unlawful in another”); United States v. Abramson, 553 F.2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir.1977) (same); United States v. Schwartz, 398 F.2d 464, 467 (7th Cir.1968) (federal statute “does not violate the Fifth Amendment even though there is a lack of uniformity among the state laws upon which it depends”). Notwithstanding Stevens’s claims to the contrary, section 48 is not unconstitutionally vague.
IV.
To be sure, we are not insensitive to the concerns implicated when a federal court declares an entire category of speech outside the purview of the First Amendment. Nor can we disagree with our majority colleagues that the judicial power in this realm of constitutional law is one that *250should be wielded sparingly, and then only with great deliberation and care. However, we know of no principle that lower courts should refrain from developing our nation’s free speech jurisprudence and decline to analogize and apply the Supreme Court’s precedents in this area without first receiving the express permission to do so. In the absence of a Supreme Court pronouncement to the contrary, and in light of the unique circumstances before us, we believe our determination — that the depictions of animal cruelty prohibited by 18 U.S.C. § 48 are not protected by the Constitution — both faithfully discharges our judicial obligation to duly advance the law’s development when appropriate to do so, and comports with the Supreme Court’s articulation of the limits of the First Amendment’s protections as set forth in Chaplinsky and Ferber.
In conclusion, 18 U.S.C. § 48 significantly advances the Government’s compelling interest in protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty, and the depictions it prohibits are of such minimal social value as to render this narrow category of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment. Furthermore, the statute is neither substantially overbroad nor unconstitutionally vague. Thus, we would hold that section 48 is a valid congressional act, and would therefore affirm Stevens’s conviction.

. Throughout this opinion we refer to speech as "unprotected” as a form of shorthand. We mean that “these areas of speech can, consistently with the First Amendment, be regulated because of their constitutionally proscribable content." R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377, 383, 112 S.Ct. 2538, 120 L.Ed.2d 305 (1992) (emphasis in original). Because 18 U.S.C. § 48 does not engage in any content discrimination within the category of animal cruelty depictions, cf. id. at 386, 112 S.Ct. 2538, using such shorthand does not raise constitutional concerns.

. To the extent the majority suggests that Chaplinsky is somehow of diminished prece-dential force, we respectfully disagree. While it is true that the broad “fighting words” doctrine first recognized in Chaplinsky has been subsequently narrowed, see James L. Swanson, Unholy Fire: Cross Burning, Symbolic Speech, and the First Amendment: Virginia v. Black, 2003 Cato Sup.Ct. Rev. 81, 90 (2002-2003) (suggesting only that the fighting words category of unprotected speech has later been “diluted”), the expansiveness of the particular exception at issue does not detract from the integrity of the constitutional principle articulated there — that certain speech may be categorically unprotected under the First Amendment. Furthermore, that few types of speech have been so deemed under the balancing inquiry says nothing of the continuing vitality of the inquiry itself, especially when this principle continues to be cited by the Supreme Court. See, e.g., Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343, 358-59, 123 S.Ct. 1536, 155 L.Ed.2d 535 (2003) (citing Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-72, 62 S.Ct. 766, 86 L.Ed. 1031 (1942)).

. While the Supreme Court has not established a precise test to determine when a particular interest is sufficiently important to *238warrant such a label, we note that it has found interests compelling in a wide variety of contexts. See, e.g., Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 328, 123 S.Ct. 2325, 156 L.Ed.2d 304 (2003) ("attaining a diverse student body”); Simon & Schuster, Inc. v. Members of N.Y. State Crime Victims Bd., 502 U.S. 105, 118, 119, 112 S.Ct. 501, 116 L.Ed.2d 476 (1991) ("ensuring that victims of crime are compensated by those who harm them” and "that criminals do not profit from their crimes”); Eu v. San Francisco County Democratic Cent. Comm., 489 U.S. 214, 226, 109 S.Ct. 1013, 103 L.Ed.2d 271 (1989) (“[m]ain-taining a stable political system”); Federal Election Comm'n v. Nat’l Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S. 480, 496-97, 105 S.Ct. 1459, 84 L.Ed.2d 455 (1985) (preventing governmental corruption).

. The statute defines "sore” to cover any situation where a horse suffers because "an irritating or blistering agent has been applied, internally or externally, by a person to any *239limb of a horse, ... any burn, cut, or laceration has been inflicted by a person on any limb of a horse, ... [or] any tack, nail, screw, or chemical agent has been injected by a person into or used by a person on any limb of ahorse.” 15 U.S.C. § 1821.

. We further reject Stevens's assertion that the fact that society accepts the subjugation of *241animals for certain utilitarian purposes undercuts this conclusion. While sometimes the line between cruelty to animals and acceptable use of animals may be fine, our society has been living and legislating within these boundaries for centuries, since the advent of the first anti-cruelty law. Although an imprecise analogy, we would posit that preventing torture to humans is an undisputedly compelling interest despite the fact that under certain circumstances it is legal to put a person to death. Compare Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153, 169, 96 S.Ct. 2909, 49 L.Ed.2d 859 (1976), with Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97, 102, 97 S.Ct. 285, 50 L.Ed.2d 251 (1976).

. Indeed, the question of whether Congress exceeds its constitutional authority when regulating intrastate activities was one that had, until just recently, divided the circuits. Compare, e.g., United States v. Rodia, 194 F.3d 465, 474-82 (3d Cir.1999) (upholding statute prohibiting intrastate possession of child pornography made with materials that had traveled in interstate commerce) with United States v. Smith, 402 F.3d 1303, 1315-16 (11th Cir.2005) (finding the same statute unconstitutional), cert. granted and vacated, 545 U.S. 1125, 125 S.Ct. 2938, 162 L.Ed.2d 863 (2005), and rev’d on remand, 459 F.3d 1276, 1284-85 (11th Cir.2006) (upholding statute as proper exercise of Commerce Clause power *242in light of Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 125 S.Ct. 2195, 162 L.Ed.2d 1 (2005)).

. On the other hand, there is nothing over-inclusive about a statute that criminalizes the knowing distribution of depictions between locales where the particular depicted act is illegal in at least one of the two places. On this point, we initially wish to note that the example given by the majority, supra at 233-34, pertaining to Party Z is, in our opinion, somewhat incomplete. Under our reading of section 48, Party Z may be prosecuted for possessing a depiction of animal cruelty in Virginia originally made in the Northern Mariana Islands, even where the underlying activity depicted is legal in the Northern Mariana Islands, only if the act is otherwise illegal in Virginia or in the state or territory to which Party Z knowingly directs the sale of the depiction. Were the acts legal in both Virginia and the Northern Mariana Islands, Party Z could not be prosecuted for selling the depiction in Virginia to someone back in the Northern Mariana Islands.
In any event, Congress was entitled to simply target the "visible apparatus" that is the commercial trafficking of the prohibited materials, especially where the underlying criminal acts are being carried out clandestinely so as to thwart detection and prosecution. New York v. Ferber, 458 U.S. 747, 760, 102 S.Ct. 3348, 73 L.Ed.2d 1113 (1982); H.R.Rep. No. 106-397, at 3 (1999) (discussing witness testimony that the perpetrators and the locations of the actual acts of animal abuse were difficult to ascertain based on the tapes themselves, thereby posing significant enforcement problems for state authorities under existing anti-cruelty statutes).

. In analogizing to Ferber, we do not mean to suggest that the conduct underlying the creation of depictions of animal cruelty is of the same order as the reprehensible behavior implicit in child abuse. Nevertheless, insofar as Ferber highlighted the critical circumstances when a new category of consti-nationally proscribable speech may warrant recognition, we find its discussion highly instructive to our resolution of the question at hand — the proper place that depictions of animal cruelty should have in our First Amendment jurisprudence.

. And although "Catch Dogs” contains substantial footage of dogs physically restraining wild hogs, we note nevertheless that the video also plainly depicts a Japanese dogfight in its entirety.

. Caselaw demonstrates that it is not unusual for dog fights to be filmed. See Ash v. State, 290 Ark. 278, 718 S.W.2d 930, 931 (1986) (describing police raid of dogfight where fight was being videotaped); People v. Lambert, Nos. 2001QN043659, 2001QN043660, 2001QU043661, 2001QN043662, 2001QU043663, 2002 WL 1769931, at *2 (N.Y.Crim. Ct. June 18, 2002) (same); State v. Shelton, 741 So.2d 473, 474 (Ala.Crim.App.1999) (same).