Feral cat advocates fighting back in Los Angeles court
By Christie Keith
February 18, 2010
When the Los Angeles Superior Court ruled in December of last year that L.A. Animal Services could no longer participate in any program to neuter and release feral cats, the sheer scope of the order hit the animal welfare world like a sledgehammer. Today, the No Kill Advocacy Center and the Los Angeles Stray Cat Alliance, a TNR group, are fighting back with the filing of a lawsuit calling the ruling unconstitutional and in violation of state law.
I spoke with NKAC director Nathan Winograd, who said the judge’s order in the case, known as Urban Wildlands Group vs. the City of Los Angeles, was unconstitutional, ignored state law, and was incredibly far-reaching.
The judge issued a writ that prevented the city from even telling people that there were services available anywhere in the community. It prohibited the city from waiving trap rental fees for trap-neuter-release programs. It ordered city shelters to stop releasing feral cats to rescue groups.
The court even went so far as to tell city shelters they could not change any laws that would allow any kind of TNR initiative in the future. The order oversteps the authority of the court, telling legislators they can’t pass laws. It also violates California’s Hayden law, which explicitly gives rescue groups right to take those cats who are going to be killed.
The ruling is so far-reaching that all the shelters were ordered to remove from their premises any literature that even expresses support for TNR, including independent magazines in the shelter waiting rooms. We think this order is unconstitutional, and we are going to make that argument in court.
Representing us pro bono is national law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, LLP, and they have filed an emergency motion in superior court asking the court to allow us to intervene as defendants in the case, as if they sued us instead of the city. We have heard the city may not appeal, so we would appeal the court’s order as the intervener-defendant. Even if the city does decide to appeal, we believe that the law impacts our interests in a very significant way, and believe we will provide a more vigorous defense of the cats.
We believe we have an incredibly strong case both as to our motion to intervene and the legal merits of the court order, which is so wide ranging and ignores several facts of law.
One, we don’t believe the city actually has a TNR program. It’s being done by rescue groups and volunteers. The city only provides low cost vouchers for spay and neuter.
Even if the court finds that constitutes engaging in a TNR program, the claims by the Wildlands Group is barred by statute of limitations, as the city has been doing it for years. Their action was not filed in timely manner.
Last, the order went too far and impinged on the sovereignty of the legislative branch in telling it that it can’t make laws that are constitutional.
Aside from the legal issues, we want to make it clear we’re not willing to allow the Urban Wildlands Group to turn back the clock on shelter policies to the dark age of catch and kill, and make it the official policy of the city of Los Angeles. We also don’t think it addresses the real cause of bird species decline, namely, human activities and pollution.
One of the other things we’re going to cite is that Urban Wildlands takes great pains to say they’re not advocating for the killing of cats, but that is exactly the effect of the ruling. One of the studies we’re bringing before the court is a 2006 study in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, looking at all shelters in Ohio over an 8-year period. It found that only one shelter had cat deaths dropping instead of rising, and it was the only one with a TNR program.
In 2008 or 2009, there was a study Alley Cat Allies brought to light, a national study conducted by the Harris Poll that found that over 80 percent of respondents thought it was more humane to leave a cat in the street if they knew animal control would put a cat to death.
Given that L.A. city shelters can’t discuss TNR, or refer people to a rescue group, or offer low cost spay/neuter vouchers, or release a feral cat back to the person calling animal control about the cat, the net effect will be an increase in the number of free roaming ferals in the city of Los Angeles. So even if the goal is to reduce numbers to reduce predation, this ruling acts in opposition to that goal.
Winograd said that one of the attorneys involved in the case also represented the NKAC in its previous successful lawsuit against the county of Los Angeles about the rights of access for rescue groups to animals in the county shelters. They expect a fairly rapid ruling on their request to be recognized as an intervener-defendant, which will be heard by the same judge who issued the order. If he rejects it, they’ll appeal, and a different judge would hear the case at that time.
The cat who came in from the cold: The first paragraph of this heartwarming 

