Curiosity and the Cats: Developing Creative Legal Frameworks for Animal Protection

Kyle McEntee:

We're joined today by Carney Anne Nassar. Prior to venturing into academia, Carney Anne, a big cat expert, had a successful career as an animal protection attorney, including putting together critical information that was needed to build a successful wildlife trafficking case against Tiger King Joe Exotic. We're going to talk about your work as an animal lawyer, but first I wanted to spend some time talking about how you got to practicing animal law. When you were in law school, you had a different career in mind. Tell me about that.

Carney Anne Nasser:

I went to law school with the plan of pursuing sports law. I had the opportunity to do some sports law internships and work with an NFL team, made a lot of great connections in the sports law world, and I found that it was not really fueling my soul. I'm just sort of an activist at heart. I'm constantly looking for situations where I can advance somebody's legal interests, where I can help somebody who is treated unfairly, unjustly, or not being given adequate access, or whatever it might be. Sports law essentially is business law, but in a sports context. It really wasn't congruent with my personality and what I think I was ultimately designed to do.

On top of that, we're going back 20 years now, 20 plus years, and I found the field to be pretty unfriendly to young women at the time. It still is, thankfully to a lesser degree, but very male-dominated. I was not very comfortable in a lot of the situations I found myself in.

I think, like many women in corporate America, I had very uncomfortable situations that I had to figure out how to handle and get out of. I'm a big believer that life is happening for me, not to me. I am able to appreciate that it was the universe steering me into a bigger, better direction.

Kyle McEntee:

What were you thinking at that time? You entered law school with this plan. You start to experience this practice area and this workplace setting that was not conducive to, as you put it, the fuel you need for your soul. What did that period of reflection feel like when you were giving up on this thing that you were pursuing?

Carney Anne Nasser:

It was a little bit disappointing, but at the same time, I've always had a lot of faith, for whatever reason, that if I listen to my gut, that the universe usually has a way of sorting things out for the best. It's not more complex than that. I know in the writing world they call them plotters or pantsers, people who either do a lot of pre-planning or people who tend to go with their gut and fly by the seat of their pants. I'm a pantser. That's just how my personality is. I made some decisions based on my gut feeling of what was best for me.

I also knew that the first job I took out of law school wasn't necessarily going to be chained to my desk to stay there for my lifetime. I always had it in my head that I could construct a career, that I could find my way to something really meaningful. I moved forward with that faith in myself that I would figure it out.

Kyle McEntee:

I'm hearing a few different characteristics revealing themselves here. One is self-confidence. The other is a certain level of comfort with change, which allows you to just sit back and take what comes at you, yes, but also when something comes at you, deciding what to do next.

Carney Anne Nasser:

I think growing up, I got accustomed and used to, and to a certain extent comfortable, with a certain level of instability or change. That maybe wasn't really pleasant at the time and maybe felt like a negative thing, but ultimately it helped build muscle for me that has served me really well throughout my career because I have been able to make brave leaps of faith without fear.

Kyle McEntee:

I do want to talk a little bit about that first job out of law school. You mentioned that you knew you weren't going to be there forever, but what were you doing and how did it set you on the path to where you are today?

Carney Anne Nasser:

The first job I had out of law school was at a boutique practice up in Boston. Working in a boutique practice, I think, is such a great experience as a first-year lawyer because I wasn't working with multiple layers of associates between me and a managing partner. I was working with the managing partner, working with all the partners, really, and so my writing was critiqued by attorneys who'd been in the practice for decades. I think that I had tremendous growth as a young lawyer, even in that first year, because I had to step in and do things that, in a big law firm, a first-year attorney is just not going to be given the opportunity to do.

Kyle McEntee:

So you worked for this boutique firm, doing some litigation, and then you moved to a larger firm and got some more experience. This was a job you eventually quit because it really wasn't so fulfilling for you. And so there really was this period of time between law school and actually getting into the animal law world. Can you talk a little bit about how animal law got on your radar as something you wanted to pursue?

Carney Anne Nasser:

Animal law got on my radar because I was watching CNN one day and I saw a woman interviewed and she was identified as an animal lawyer. She was serving as a special master, deciding where Michael Vick's dogs were suitable to re-home. So she was determining which dogs would go to the Humane Society of the United States or Best Friends Animal Society, which dogs could go to rescue groups and were already ready to be placed in homes.

Kyle McEntee:

And a special master is someone who works on behalf of the judiciary?

Carney Anne Nasser:

Correct. Correct. She was playing this very, very specific role in that case that had to do just with doing what was in the best interest of the dogs. When I went to law school, I had been involved in animal advocacy as a young person, even as an adolescent growing up. I had done some animal advocacy volunteer work. So it was something that I was passionate about.

And when I realized that that was actually a career opportunity, that was my breakthrough moment ultimately. It was happening to turn on the TV and see her. And it wasn't even the content. I don't even remember what she said. It was more that I saw that she was identified as an animal protection lawyer. And in that moment, everything changed. And it became for me about massive action to figure out what I needed to do to get from where I was in that moment to practicing animal law.

Kyle McEntee:

So what did you need to do?

Carney Anne Nasser:

The Greek root of the word decision literally means to cut off. And so when you decide, you cut off any other possibility and really gain the ability to focus in, to zoom in on what your end outcome is so you can reverse engineer it. So I went into overdrive. Who's doing animal law? Who would I need to work for to do animal law? And I found it was the national and international animal protection organizations that are doing the impact litigation in a variety of different animal areas, whether it's animals used for entertainment, factory farming, animals who are used in experiments or companion animal issues.

There are a wide variety of specialties within the field of animal law. So I began having conversations with people who are in the practice. I realized very quickly that the field was very small. There was very small number of opportunities and a lot of people who are very interested in that. There are a lot of Ivy League graduates who had done federal clerkships who were already published in animal law. And I was none of those things.

I was still undeterred. I said, I'm going to figure this out. And I started applying for jobs. And I went to do my first interview at the PETA Foundation back when it was headquartered in Norfolk, Virginia. I was there for three days doing a very in-depth working interview, which was extremely helpful to me because it exposed me to the type of work that they were all doing day in and day out. I didn't end up getting the job that time, but it was confirmation to me that I was on the right path because the work I found that they were doing was extremely cutting edge, was extremely engaging. And it gave me a jumping off point to start familiarizing myself with all of the different areas of animal law to see what I might be interested in.

Kyle McEntee:

So you referred to the work that PETA was doing as cutting edge. You also referred to impact litigation. I think those two things are related here. Can you talk a little bit about what impact litigation is and what exactly it was that PETA was doing that you found so cutting edge in the law?

Carney Anne Nasser:

Impact litigation is litigation that is undertaken to change the legal landscape for a broader category of individuals or entities. It's not just for the one plaintiff. For example, Roe v. Wade was an impact litigation case.

Kyle McEntee:

They're usually selecting the plaintiff and the plaintiff knows what they're getting into. They know that they're advocating in their position as a plaintiff to make a larger change and you as their lawyer are representing that plaintiff with an eye towards that greater change.

Carney Anne Nasser:

And as applied in the animal law space, it's really significant because animals are still considered property under the law. And when you're dealing with beings who do not have rights, it means that you have to be very creative in how you pursue litigation strategies and how you think because you have to be thinking outside the box because we are currently working with this animals as property framework, but that doesn't mean that there isn't some creative strategy that can be used, that there isn't some obscure statute that we can tap into and utilize.

And that's where I really got excited because I realized that this was not just boilerplate file the same motion over and over and over again. This was creativity encouraged and no ideas were too out of left field. It was all very desired for people to have extremely obscure, bizarre out there ideas because that's ultimately what is going to shift the legal landscape for quote unquote clients who ultimately are classified as property.

Kyle McEntee:

You can't have a dog who has a lawyer, right? So someone's got to organize on their behalf. When you think of improving animal welfare, I think a lot of people are going to think about changing statutes. So that's lobbying the federal government to add a law or change a law. But what impact litigation does is it allows you to work within the judicial system to change the law that way by getting one existing statute applied in a different way or changing how a word is understood. How do you develop that broad of a knowledge to know what tools are even out there? Because like you said, some of it can be really obscure. So where are you looking?

Carney Anne Nasser:

Well, first of all, you surround yourself with really, really smart, passionate people. And also having an experience that is completely unrelated, I think really helped me because I wasn't coming with any preconceived notions about this is the way it's always been done. I had situations where I suggested, if these chimpanzees are still being considered property, maybe we can put them in receivership.

These are all ideas that have been discussed and actually utilized. There have been cases where animals have been put in receivership to receive better care because that's just the legal framework we're dealing with. And that seems like a kind of kooky out there thing, but it's happened. Land use, zoning, code compliance. Those are all things that one would not think would add value to an animal law career. However, it absolutely did because I use those things in animal law too.

Why not this? Why not that? We're going to be creating new paths, new ground all the time. So having that innate curiosity about what else might be out there, what else could I look for that's not just in an animal cruelty statute? Is there something in a land use statute? Is there something in zoning regulations? Is there something in the business regulations? Is there something in the media and advertising domain about how a circus is advertised? I mean, there's so much that can be done even while we're in this very narrow legal status for animals that has been broadened for corporations. It's been broadened for ships that can be considered legal persons, but we're still dealing with animals as property. So it takes a creative, curious brain.

Kyle McEntee:

Well, what's really interesting to me here is, beyond the creative, curious brain, it actually does require the system itself. And I think a lot of advocates will look at a system, be like, that's an unjust system. I'm going to reject it and then expect change to happen nonetheless. And that kind of change is a lot more difficult than looking at a system and figuring out how to dismantle it with its own parts. And I think that's what you're describing what you do, that you're looking at all the different parts of the system and figuring out what levers can I pull to make the change that I want. And that takes a different type of skill than just, “I'm going to demand change. I'm going to demand it right now.”

Carney Anne Nasser:

Yes. And don't get me wrong, when you're working in any type of advocacy space, whether it is animal protection, whether it is women's rights, whether it's any kind of social justice or environmental justice cause, it's a multifaceted and multipronged approach. So the litigation strategies are always going to go hand in hand with public education and with demonstrations. They're going to go hand in hand with lobbying and working with legislators to introduce improvements to the law. It's going to be all happening all at the same time.

But the litigation piece, you are absolutely correct. We can't just sit and wait for the law to be better or to be what we want it to be. We have to work with what we have. And there's a lot that we have achieved with what we have, which is still have fallen so short. The law as it is right now. It's just such a throwback to a bygone era, but we've still been able to make huge changes.

Kyle McEntee:

So we got a little ahead of ourselves because I got too excited by the topic of impact litigation. Before you were able to actually be involved in impact litigation, you first had to get the job. So you just mentioned before that you didn't get that first job after you interviewed with PETA. How did you put yourself in a position to get the experience without actually having a job to get that experience? It's kind of like this catch 22 that I think a lot of people run into.

Carney Anne Nasser:

It required a lot of humility and a lot of humility that as much as they say they are determined to find something that they'd love to do. I'm not sure that a lot of lawyers would be able to humble themselves in the way that I did. And what I did was I took unpaid internships alongside law students. While I was licensed in two states, I'd been practicing law for five years. And I was so determined that I was going to build my CV, gain that experience. I took unpaid internships to gain animal law experience because I was just that committed to the end result.

Kyle’s Dogs: *barking wildly*

Carney Anne Nasser: They're just like, “here, here.”

Kyle McEntee:

Yes, they are saying, “here, here. Thank you for protecting us.”

Carney Anne Nasser:

I don't know, maybe it's better interviewing me with having dogs in the background. It's like adds some correct ambiance to the whole thing.

Kyle McEntee:

So this unpaid internship, you were actually employed full time while you were doing that. You're doing two jobs at once. So it's not like you were just like, I'm quitting my job and I'm going to go work unpaid. That takes your humility to an extra level. The fact that you were you're working a second job to build that CV.

Carney Anne Nasser:

I also, just by happenstance, because I had signed up for email alerts from the Humane Society of the United States, they advertised a graduate program through George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management, a graduate program in community advocacy with a specific cohort for animal protection. And I applied to that graduate program, got in and was in that first and ultimately only cohort at GW that focused expressly on animal protection issues. So I was I was working full time. I was doing an unpaid internship and I was in graduate school.

Kyle McEntee:

And I guess that's sometimes what it takes. Right. I mean, when you mentioned earlier, this is a really small field. You really had to just do what you got to do.

Carney Anne Nasser:

Yeah. I mean, massive action is what is required for big shifts, big change. And I've learned that repeatedly throughout my professional life. I knew that I needed to put every single possible tool in my tool chest. I could not go back and change where I went to law school, what my class rank was, the fact that I wasn't on law review. Like, I couldn't go back and change any of those things.

I had to work with what I had then there. And that opportunity popped up and I had to not second guess. I couldn't sit around and think, well, maybe or I don't know. Or, you know, is this really necessary? I just dove in. And that was yet another opportunity to. Gain connections and build relationships with another animal protection organization. So I was building a professional reputation within the movement before I actually worked inside.

Kyle McEntee:

So let's talk about some of your experience working on behalf of big cats. In the introduction, I called you a big cat expert. And this is how you eventually crossed paths with Joe Exotic. And I'll tell you, this is different than how I crossed paths with him. Mine was on the couch watching Netflix during COVID. So tell me about the situation that kind of put him in your crosshairs.

Carney Anne Nasser:

Joe has been at the epicenter of big cat trafficking in the United States for a long time. This is an open secret, like it's not even a secret. This has been well known for law enforcement. It's been well known for the animal protection community and the federal agencies that regulate roadside zoos, like the facility he used to run. So it was very well known that he was the main supplier to a lot of the other roadside menageries that were offering what we call pay to play. These cub bottle feeding experiences are very lucrative and drove this puppy mill style breeding of tigers and other big cats, who were then ultimately dumped into the black hole of the exotic pet trade when they got too big, too unmanageable, and too expensive to care for. $10,000 - $20,000 a year to feed a big cat. They're not just going to keep they're not just going to keep cats for the rest of their lives. They have to get rid of them when they're done with those lucrative photo ops as as babies.

So he was just one of the biggest players in that space. He kind of dubbed himself “Tiger King” and had been under investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for different open investigations for violations of the Federal Animal Welfare Act. Lots of cub deaths, undercover investigations that really never resulted in anything significant. The USDA was meant to revoke his license to exhibit. They never followed through with that. So he just kind of was left to continue going on, which is really a similar story for a lot of these roadside series across the United States. And I was thinking from a strategic place of, there's got to be something else. I mean, the abuse of the big cats, the things that are happening out in the open are not carrying the day.

In 2015, I was asked to give expert testimony in a legislative hearing in Baton Rouge on a bill that was introduced to give a tiger owner here in Louisiana, a guy who had a tiger in a gas station not far from LSU. He wanted to keep this tiger, even though a case that had been litigated up to Louisiana Supreme Court had invalidated his permit. Tiger was meant to go to an accredited sanctuary in Colorado, and he wanted to get an exemption from the law. So in true Louisiana political fashion, he asks his state senator, can you introduce this bill to give me an exemption so that I can keep this tiger in the gas station cage?

Kyle McEntee:

And for those who don't know LSU, their mascot is the Tigers. And so that's the connection here.

Carney Anne Nasser:

Yes. And yeah, the LSU's got Mike the Tiger. That's been a tradition for many years. And this gas station was called Tiger Truck Stop. So the owner of Tiger Truck Stop, Mike Sandlin, brought Joe Exotic down from Oklahoma to be an expert witness at the legislative hearing on why it's so great to have tigers in gas stations. Mike Sandlin's father had had a number of tigers in gas stations throughout Texas. They had been retired to a sanctuary in Colorado., where we were hoping to relocate Tony the Tiger from Mike Sandlin's place.

So he brings down Joe. I go to the legislative hearing on the other side. And I noticed that he's having a conversation with the owners of a roadside zoo up in northern Louisiana. And through my contacts at Louisiana's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, I found out after the fact that Joe had gone in and taken cats out of that facility and taken them back to Oklahoma.

This is a facility that had been shooting lions instead of providing them with vet care that they couldn't afford. It was a failing facility. Their USDA license had been suspended. And they were not supposed to be doing any transfers. They weren't supposed to be doing any business. And once I found out about that, I did some Freedom of Information Act requests. I got some records from the state. And I noticed that all of this together was a Lacey Act violation. The Lacey Act is our federal anti-wildlife trafficking statute.

Kyle McEntee:

So I want to point out, you could do anything related to this because of some position of authority that you developed over time. That these are relationships that you had in addition to the familiarity you had with the law. You just mentioned that you knew someone in the Louisiana state government who told you that this was happening. They don't just go telling random people. What was the actual work like, like the preparation for the hearing, for example, that furthered your position in the middle of animal trafficking?

Carney Anne Nasser:

By this time, I had been in the animal law world for five years. The second time I applied for a job at the PETA Foundation, I got it. And by happenstance, I was assigned to do litigation work in captive exotic animal protection. So roadside zoos that were exploiting exotic animals for profit, circuses, use of exotic animals on television shows, any sort of trafficking issues. This was all within what we were looking at and what we were trying to address. And so I had this body of experience at this point. So I developed these relationships with state departments of wildlife and fisheries. I developed relationships with all of the accredited sanctuaries. I had developed relationships with other experts in the field and was fortunate that I would get phone calls letting me know, this is just happened or this is about to happen. “Can you help us out?”

Kyle McEntee:

So in your case, you have all this experience, you're making an impact. And then more people notice areas where impact is necessary and you're the first call. I think that's really central to how you ended up building this case against the so-called Tiger King. So you mentioned that what you figured out was that he had been violating the Lacey Act. Can you first explain what the Lacey Act is and then how you were involved? Because you're a private citizen, you're working for a private organization, you're not a prosecutor, and yet you played a direct role in his prosecution.

Carney Anne Nasser:

The Lacey Act is our federal anti-wildlife trafficking statute. So when we're talking about big cats in captivity, there are three primary laws that I practiced under. One was the Federal Animal Welfare Act, which applies to any situation where animals are being exhibited to the public. And the second one is the Endangered Species Act, which applies to tigers, lions, leopards, many of the species of big cats, though not all.

The Lacey Act is an anti-trafficking statute. Say a hunter hunts an animal out of season or without a license or doesn't tag them properly or something, and then takes that animal across state lines, that's a violation of federal law at that point. Now we have a trafficking violation. The Lacey Act applies to animals who are alive as it applies to wildlife taken in the wild. It's got important applications within the context of roadside zoos and the illicit trade in exotic animals in the United States because there's so much happening.

It's pretty well known that a lot of drug traffickers have turned to wildlife trafficking, at least as an extra side quest, because it is extremely lucrative and so much less risky. Even if they get caught, the penalties are typically so much lower. So this is an underworld that is insidious and pervasive in the United States. And the Lacey Act is a really, really important tool for us to try to attack those trafficking networks.

Kyle McEntee:

So you figure out that there's probably a Lacey Act violation. What's your first step? Are you gathering evidence or have you already gathered the evidence at this point and now you just need to present that evidence to the prosecutor? What's your role?

Carney Anne Nasser:

If you want somebody to take a case, you have to make it for them. Make it impossible for them to say no. So I had collected through Freedom of Information Act requests, state records requests, all this information about what I perceived to be a violation of the Lacey Act. And I put it together in a binder. I included the statutory information. I included some background information, context, a timeline. And then I had a tab for the evidence that supported each of the elements of a Lacey Act violation.

And I had friends at the time who were working in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana. The facility that Joe had taken the cats from was in the Western District of Louisiana. So I had somebody refer me to one of their colleagues in the Western District. And I said, “listen, I've got a Lacey Act case that involves some tigers and lions. If you have 10 minutes, I'll drive to Lafayette.” So I did.

And I met with special investigators from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. And I met with a few different AUSAs. And they really, really wanted to take the case. They took the binder that I'd given them, that I'd prepared for them, that I gave them. And ultimately, what they did with that is they made a collateral request to Oklahoma City, because the more significant problem was in Oklahoma. So I flew to Oklahoma City. And I met with the prosecutors who ultimately ended up prosecuting Joe. You know, it was a very not sexy, I mean, it was a paperwork thing, right?

Like, you know, we think of like Al Capone, like he went under because of tax fraud, right? Because it's like, we have decades of documented animal abuse and crazy stuff going on at Joe's facility. It's all well documented, not just by animal advocates, but by a federal agency that's inspecting the facility. But here we have this paperwork issue, where he's signing what's ultimately like a government document that is attesting to something that's not true. Rather than only charging him with Endangered Species Act violations, like he was charged with shooting tigers in the head. Those are misdemeanors. The paperwork violations were the felonies. So they carried a lot more weight. And that was an important piece of the case.

You know, I think that there is this misconception in among the general public that the murder for hire situation that people became aware of during the whole Tiger King frenzy on Netflix, that that happened. And then there was like this tacking on of wildlife charges. And the reality of the situation is, he was about to be indicted for wildlife crimes. And then the murder for hire scenario happened and they had to jump on that right away. So it was a very long, very thorough, very well executed investigation that ultimately ended up in him being sentenced to 21 years in prison for not just the murder for hire, but the violations of the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Kyle McEntee:

So I think one piece of this story that's going to be missing for listeners is how you're managing to do all this work without actually having a client. So who's actually paying you?

Carney Anne Nasser:

At the time, I was a wildlife specialist and regulatory attorney at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. So I had been at PETA for four years, and then I had gone over to do legislative regulatory and wildlife specific work at the Animal Legal Defense Fund. And this was within the parameters of what I was meant to do, advance the legal interests of animals, even if it's not ALDF filing the case, even if it's just providing a support role to prosecutors and being able to close an important loop in a strategy that hadn't been tried before to bring down America's most notorious tiger trafficker.

Kyle McEntee:

So you've had a lot of success in impact litigation, in changing federal statutes through lobbying, through this prosecutorial help. And then you decided it was time for a change, and you moved into academia. How did you know it was time for that change?

Carney Anne Nasser:

I had loved all the litigation, everything that I did. I loved doing, I had done some adjunct teaching work, and I really enjoyed the teaching. And I had an opportunity to become the director of a clinical program at Michigan State, where I could literally supervise law students in the practice of animal law.

So continue doing the legal work that I love, but also teach and combine those things together. So to me, that was really compelling, to be able to put together two things that I really love. Well, I became the second full-time animal law professor in the world when I took that position up at Michigan State, and did a lot of the similar, I mean, it was the animal welfare clinic, but full disclosure, it was probably more the big cat welfare clinic, to be honest, because we just did so much of the work that I had been doing.

And that ultimately proved to be really valuable to my students who have gone on to work in animal protection themselves. So that was my first kind of major step into academia, and a realization about how much and how equally passionate I was about mentoring young people who were on the cusp of entering their professional careers. To help them really, to be that kind of cheerleader, mentor, guide through the process, to take some of the mystery out of it, to help them get out of their own way if they need to, to help them through some of that figuring out that I wish I had had more help with. And yeah, that's been extremely rewarding to me.