Horse advocates anxious for First Amendment ruling

There may or may not be too many horses on federal lands in the West, but a U.S. district judge says there’s not enough judicial staff in Nevada to deal anytime soon with an appeal over First Amendment rights at wild horse roundups. U.S. District Judge Larry Hicks told lawyers for the government and a horse protection group he won’t make a ruling until after March on a case sent back to his court last year by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The lawsuit was brought by Laura Leigh, a photographer and leader of the group Wild Horse Education who says her freedom of press rights were violated in 2010 when she was denied access to mustang roundups in Nevada’s eastern Lincoln County near the Utah line. A three-judge panel in San Francisco overturned Hicks’ earlier ruling and told Hicks to reconsider whether the Bureau of Land Management’s restrictions on media access to roundups are constitutional...more