A group of animal rights groups and advocates filed a landmark lawsuit on Monday challenging Utah’s “ag-gag” law as an unconstitutional attack on free speech and freedom of the press that criminalizes whistleblowers while shielding corporate agriculture.

The state’s 2012 law criminalizes a person that records sounds or images from a livestock operation or applies for a job at a livestock operation with the intent to make such recordings; in other words, it prohibits documenting animal abuse.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), which joins PETA, CounterPunch, animal rights advocate Amy Meyer, journalist Will Potter, Professor James McWilliams and animal investigation consultant Daniel Hauff in the lawsuit, states that

Meyer was the first person in the nation charged under ag-gag laws after she filmed a slaughterhouse from a public road. Charges were soon dropped, but the law stands in Utah and other states as well.  The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Stewart Gollan of the Utah Legal Clinic, part of the legal team representing the group,

The suit against the Utah law is the first legal challenge to one of the nation’s ag-gag laws.