{"id":596523,"date":"2021-07-19T05:06:24","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T09:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=596523"},"modified":"2021-07-19T05:06:26","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T09:06:26","slug":"pitrunners-press-supreme-court-to-strike-down-ban-on-puerto-rican-cockfighting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/pitrunners-press-supreme-court-to-strike-down-ban-on-puerto-rican-cockfighting\/","title":{"rendered":"Pitrunners Press Supreme Court To Strike Down Ban on Puerto Rican Cockfighting"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">24<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fpitrunners-press-supreme-court-to-strike-down-ban-on-puerto-rican-cockfighting%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=596523&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div readability=\"30.45871559633\">\n\t\t\t<span class=\"article-category\"><a class href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/courts\/\">The Courts<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"article-excerpt\">Petitioners push Court to clarify limits on regulatory authority<\/p>\n<figure class=\"post-thumbnail-container relative lg:mr-24 w-full my-4 mb-8\">\n\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"736\" height=\"491\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-736x491-1.jpg\" class=\"w-full lazyload blur-up wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"data:image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAAAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 736px) 100vw, 736px\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-736x491.jpg 736w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/GettyImages-1189672864-1-1400x933.jpg 1400w\" data-sizes=\"auto\" \/><figcaption class=\"absolute text-white p-4 w-full text-right text-xs bottom-0 bg-black opacity-75\">\n\t\t\t\tPeople attend a cockfight match at the Caimito cockfighting club the day the federal Farm Bill takes effect in San Juan, Puerto Rico on December 20, 2019. (Photo by Ricardo ARDUENGO \/ AFP) (Photo by RICARDO ARDUENGO\/AFP via Getty Images)\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\t\t\t<span class=\"text-gray text-xs md:text-lg\"><a href=\"https:\/\/freebeacon.com\/author\/kevin-daley\/\" title=\"Posts by Kevin Daley\" class=\"author url fn text-red-700\" rel=\"author\">Kevin Daley<\/a> \u2022 July 19, 2021 5:00 am<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<div readability=\"127.06619165634\">\n<p>Lawyers for a group of cockpit owners and gamecock breeders are asking the Supreme Court to strike down a federal law that bans rooster fights in Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs, who have the backing of the government of Puerto Rico, say the law is unconstitutional because it goes well beyond Congress\u2019s power to regulate commerce between states and territories. Their petition says the case presents &#8220;an ideal vehicle to provide much-needed clarity on the limits&#8221; of Congress\u2019s regulatory authority.<\/p>\n<p>The case is a unique nexus of Puerto Rican social concern and conservative legal theories about legislative power. Though the dispute is intertwined with longstanding grievances about the island\u2019s subordinate position in the U.S. political system, lawyers for the plaintiffs are advancing arguments that would put limits on the congressional authority to regulate business.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Like horse racing in Kentucky, rodeos in Texas, and hunting in Montana, cockfighting is deeply ingrained in the island\u2019s history, tradition, and culture,&#8221; the petition reads. &#8220;Introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century, cockfighting has been practiced on the island of Puerto Rico for more than 400 years. Today, Puerto Rican law proclaims cockfighting to be a \u2018cultural right of all Puerto Ricans.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Puerto Rico estimates that cockfighting supports more than 11,000 jobs and accounts for about $65 million in economic activity annually. There are about 70 cockpits across the island that host thousands of fights each year in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators, according to the petition.<\/p>\n<p>The 2018 Agriculture Improvement Act included a provision that criminalized cockfighting in every state and in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico. After the 2018 legislation, engaging in cockfighting risks a five-year prison term for each violation. Proponents cited the cruelty of the sport and associated criminal activity like drug dealing as reason for the change. Rooster fights are also connected with the 2002 spread of an exotic avian-borne illness called Newcastle disease.<\/p>\n<p>The legislation drew bitter denunciations from the island, where rooster fights are a fixture of life. Puerto Rico\u2019s legislature denounced the bill in a resolution, and the island\u2019s nonvoting delegate to Congress strongly opposed passage of the 2018 law.<\/p>\n<p>A lead challenger to the law in the lower courts was Club Gall\u00edstico, an indoor cockpit outside San Juan. The club accommodated hundreds of guests who wagered thousands of dollars on roosters over the course of a fight. Other plaintiffs included cockpit judges, gamecock breeders, and artisans who craft accessories for fighting roosters. The lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court is \u00c1ngel Manuel Ortiz-D\u00edaz, who owns two fighting venues and breeds hundreds of gamecocks.<\/p>\n<p>Now in the High Court, lawyers for the petitioners say the Court should use the cockfighting case as an opportunity to clarify Congress\u2019s power to regulate commerce under the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>Under modern commerce clause precedents, Congress may legislate on any subject that has &#8220;substantial effects&#8221; on interstate commerce. Conservative critics say that low bar gives Congress almost unbounded power to regulate, since all kinds of activity affects the national economic situation. Those critics have urged the Court to abandon that test altogether, or articulate clear limits on congressional regulatory power under the Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>The plaintiffs emphasize that cockfighting itself is not a commodity traded among states and territories. And before the 2018 law, rooster fights were mostly confined to outlying U.S. possessions like Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands. Therefore, local cockfighting is beyond the scope of Congress\u2019s commerce clause power.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Cockfighting in Puerto Rico is an inherently local activity,&#8221; the petition reads. &#8220;There is no reason to believe that cockfighting in Puerto Rico and three island territories\u2014islands that are hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles from the mainland\u2014was creating a national market for birds or any other commodity.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A federal trial court and the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals turned away legal challenges to the anti-cockfighting provision, prompting the appeal to the Supreme Court. The circuit court said the ban was an ordinary exercise of Congress\u2019s power to regulate commercial activity that crosses state lines, since sports and wagering is usually tied up with some kind of national economic activity.<\/p>\n<p>The Justice Department will file its response to the petition by Aug. 18. The Cato Institute filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to hear the appeal.<\/p>\n<p>The case is No. 20-1735 <em>\u00c1ngel Manuel Ortiz-D\u00edaz<\/em> v. <em>U.S.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a title=\"View Ortiz-Diaz v. U.S. cert petition on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/document\/516101871\/Ortiz-Diaz-v-U-S-cert-petition#from_embed\">Ortiz-Diaz v. U.S. cert pet\u2026<\/a> by <a title=\"View Washington Free Beacon&#039;s profile on Scribd\" href=\"https:\/\/www.scribd.com\/publisher\/247263517\/Washington-Free-Beacon#from_embed\">Washington Free Beacon<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Courts Petitioners push Court to clarify limits on regulatory authority  People attend a cockfight match at the Caimito cockfighting club the day the federal Farm &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1894738,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=596523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1894738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=596523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=596523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=596523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}