Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was an international, grassroots animal rights campaign to close Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory.  Huntingdon tests products like household cleaners, pharmaceuticals, pesticides, and food additives on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to wild-caught baboons.  By targeting the pillars of support for the lab (e.g. its investors, customers, stockbrokers, etc.), pressuring these companies to cut their tie with HLS, and holding residential pickets in the neighborhoods of executives of these companies and of HLS, the SHAC campaign pushed Huntingdon to the bring of bankruptcy mulitple times.

The main organizing tool of U.S. arm of the campaign was the SHAC-USA website, which advocated and reported on both legal and illegal protests against the lab.  SHAC expressed ideological support for any protest tactic that did not harm a human or non-human animal.

In 2004, six SHAC-USA activists and the organization itself (the SHAC 7) were indicted on federal "animal enterprise terrorism" charges, for allegedly conspiring under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA).  None of the defendants were accused of personally engaging in any independent illegal act--no assault, no vandalism, no threatening communications.  All of the activity alleged against the defendants is protected by the First Amendment: publishing a website, advocating lawful and unlawful protest activity, organizing and attending protests, contacting companies by phone and mail, etc.  All defendants were convicted and sentenced to four to six years in federal prison. 

CCR wrote an amicus brief on behalf of the defendants in their appeal to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, challenging the convictions as an incitement prosecution that flies in the face of well-established free speech doctrine. The Third Circuit upheld the convictions, ruling 2-1. The Panel acknowledged that much of Appellants’ speech and advocacy was protected by the First Amendment, but impermissibly allowed the mere presence of unlawful activity committed by anonymous individuals in the course of the campaign, coupled with defendants' ideological support for unlawful protest, to constitute a criminal conspiracy.  This is highly problematic under the First Amendment.