Horse ruling favors media

RENO, Nev. – A photographer and leading wild horse protection advocate who says her First Amendment rights were violated when she was denied access to mustang roundups in Nevada has scored a victory in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

A three-judge panel in San Francisco overturned a lower court ruling Tuesday and sent the case back to a federal judge in Reno to determine if the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s restrictions on media access to roundups are constitutional.

Appellate Judge Milan Smith Jr. said in an 18-page opinion the court must balance the “vital public interest in preserving the media’s ability to monitor government activities against the government’s need to impose restrictions if necessary for safety or other legitimate reasons.”

“When the government announces it is excluding the press for reasons such as administrative convenience, preservation of evidence, or protection of reporters’ safety, its real motive may be to prevent the gathering of information about government abuses or incompetence,” the judge wrote.

Laura Leigh, a photojournalist and writer for Horseback Magazine from Minden, Nev., learned about the ruling from her lawyer Tuesday afternoon while trying to observe another roundup.

“You can really hear the spirit of the Constitution in the ruling. They really understood the magnitude of what is occurring out here,” said Leigh.

BLM lawyers argued that Leigh had been granted no less access than any other member of the public and that the restrictions were necessary for safety.