A California appellate court upheld an LA ordinance this week that requires owners to spay or neuter their companion animals unless they meet one of six exemptions. Citing "several issues related to the overpopulation problem including public health and safety concerns, inhumane treatment of animals, mass euthanasia of dogs/cats at local shelters, and rising costs for animal control", the court rejected arguments that the requirement violated owners' constitutional rights.
If anyone is familiar with the group that filed this suit, please feel free to chime in here. I couldn't really figure out what they were trying to accomplish. They argued, for example, that there was an exemption for people who intended to breed their dogs, but none for those who didn't want to breed their dogs yet still wanted to keep them intact. (Huh?) They also argued that they didn't want to apply for a breeder's permit and thus be viewed as a "breeder" because it has negative connotations. (Seems pretty whiny...) And there were a lot of other head-scratching arguments, such as contending that forced sterilization is a taking. (Really? Even if you don't want to breed the animal? How can one take away something that someone else was never going to have anyway? If a tree falls in the forest... well, you get the idea...)
Maybe I'm missing something here - and I am rarely on the side of animal control, so perhaps I
am missing something - but the decision seems pretty good to me. In fact, if I had written the ordinance, I'm not sure there would have even been as many as six exemptions... but I digress.At any rate, you can read the opinion here at Concerned Dog Owners of California, et al. v. City of Los Angeles, et al.
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