WASHINGTON | In a setback for the animal-rights movement, a U.S. appeals court struck down on free-speech grounds Friday a federal law that made it a crime to sell videos of dogs fighting and other acts of animal cruelty.</p><p>All 50 U.S. states have laws against the abuse of animals, the appeals court said, but &#8220;a depiction of animal cruelty&#8221; is protected by the First Amendment.</p><p>The ruling overturns a Virginia man&#8217;s conviction, the nation&#8217;s first under the law. Robert J. Stevens of Pittsville, Va., advertised and sold two videos of pit bulls fighting each other and a third showing the pit bulls attacking hogs and wild boars.</p><p>He sold the videos to prosecutors in Pittsburgh, was prosecuted, convicted and given three years in prison.</p><p>In Friday&#8217;s decision, the appeals court in Philadelphia, by a 10-3 vote, said it was not prepared to recognize a new category of speech that is unprotected by the First Amendment.</p><p>Acts of cruelty to animals &#8220;warrant strong legal sanctions,&#8221; the appeals court said, but it ruled unconstitutional the effort to criminalize for-profit depictions of animal cruelty.</p><p>Congress passed the law in 1999 in hopes of stamping out the trade in animal-cruelty videos. Because the videos rarely showed persons who could be identified, state prosecutors often could not prove where the videos were made.</p><p>The law also was designed to stop so-called &#8220;crush videos.&#8221; According to a congressional report cited by the court, these were said to be &#8220;depictions of women inflicting torture (on animals) with their bare feet or while wearing high-heeled shoes. The cries and squeals of the animals, obviously in great pain, can also be heard in the videos.&#8221;</p><p>The law itself spoke broadly. It called for up to five years in prison for anyone who &#8220;creates, sells or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty&#8221; for the purpose of making money. This includes the showing of a &#8220;living animal&#8221; being &#8220;maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded or killed.&#8221;</p><p>Usually, videos and photographs are protected as free speech, even if they show illegal or abhorrent conduct. But in 1982, the Supreme Court made an exception for child pornography. It ruled that sexual depictions of children could be prosecuted as a crime, despite the First Amendment. This was the only way to stamp out such abuse of children, the high court said.</p><p>Government lawyers said the animal-cruelty law should be upheld on the same basis. It was needed to stop the abuse of animals for profit, they said.</p><p>The appeals court disagreed, however. &#8220;Preventing cruelty to animals, although an exceedingly worthy goal, simply does not implicate interests of the same magnitude as protecting children from physical and psychological harm,&#8221; wrote Judge Brooks Smith of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.</p><p>The three dissenters said the law should have been upheld so as to help in &#8220;protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.&#8221;</p><p>The Justice Department had no reaction Friday to the ruling. Normally, however, the government appeals to the Supreme Court when a federal law is struck down as unconstitutional.