Our Animal Protection Litigation team plays a critical role at the Humane Society of the United States, filing lawsuits and legal petitions to support our major campaigns, drafting language for state and federal animal protection bills and ballot measures, and defending animal protection laws once...

Each year, our campaigns work on a multitude of issues related to improving the lives of companion animals, including dogs, cats and horses. In 2019, we made incredible gains on this front, culminating with the signing of the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act into law in November. The...

Each December, we round up some of the year’s most notable successes in carrying on the fight for animal protection. For the next several weeks, alongside breaking news about animals and our efforts to protect them, I will bring you our top animal protection victories during this most unusual year...

In May last year, our Animal Rescue Team was on site to help local law enforcement officials with the largest cockfighting bust in U.S. history, in Val Verde, Los Angeles County. It was a gruesome scene, even for our staff members, most of whom are accustomed to seeing the worst kind of animal...

We have good news to share from Mississippi and Iowa, the only two states in the nation without a law on the books that would make acts of animal torture, like burning, drowning and intentional starvation, an automatic felony. Recently, Mississippi’s state legislature passed a bill that would do...

Missouri has finally moved to close down a puppy mill owner who’s been on the radar of federal and state inspectors for more than two decades for serious neglect of animals in her facility. Marilyn Shepherd (a.k.a. Marilyn Williams) and her Cedercrest Kennel (a.k.a. Pup 4 U) had operated without a...

In June, Humane Society of the United States responders were called in to assist with the rescue of more than 150 horses, mini-horses, mules and donkeys on a property in Camp County, Texas. Among the animals were nine mustangs, who had been removed from the wild. All of the animals our responders...

In the years since its passage more than half a century ago, the Animal Welfare Act has become an extremely important and multi-faceted animal protection law. Building on its original premise as a measure to protect animals used in research, testing and education, the AWA’s protections have evolved...

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments about Proposition 12, California’s landmark law to address animal cruelty and public health issues stemming from the worst factory farming practices, such as confining pregnant pigs in gestation crates so small they can hardly move. Jon Lovvorn...

Our Animal Rescue Team is on the ground in parts of Florida that were ravaged by Hurricane Michael. We are coordinating the movement of adoptable dogs and cats out of shelters affected by the storm and to shelters in other parts of the country, making room for animals who started to flow in before...

Some of the people and interests tied to cruelty to animals seem to come right from central casting. That’s going to help us succeed in our efforts to secure passage of the Safeguard American Food Exports (SAFE) Act, H.R. 961/S. 2006, to permanently ban domestic horse slaughter and end the export of...

When Jaqueline Villegas met her family’s new puppy at Denver International Airport, she knew right away the puppy was not the healthy Shar-Pei she had seen on PuppyFind.com, a huge online marketplace for puppies with over 50,000 puppies listed for sale. PuppyFind is also a site that the Humane...

It could have been the setting of an eerie movie that our Humane Society of the United States rescuers and law enforcement officers walked into this cool fall morning. The location was Washington County, Pennsylvania, and they were responding to an alleged large-scale animal neglect situation...

Three years ago, the American public roared in outrage upon learning of the killing of a beloved lion, Cecil, by an American trophy hunter. As terrible as that killing was, it was also a watershed moment for animal welfare – one that created a global furor against this senseless “sport” that’s...

Late last year, Pennsylvania investigators found a dog named Cam dead and frozen solid on a heavy chain, wedged between a small dog house and a fence. He appeared to have been digging for warmth when he died. As heartbreaking as this story is, unfortunately, it is not an uncommon one this time of...

With less than three months to go until Election Day, the Protect Dogs-Yes on 13 campaign in Florida is at full throttle, mobilizing public support to phase out greyhound racing in what amounts to the industry’s last redoubt. Attorneys for the state are fighting off “Hail Mary” litigation brought by...

At the Humane Society of the United States, we take on the toughest fights for all animals, and we do our best to live up to an early mission statement of our founders: Every field of humane work – everywhere. From working with state and federal lawmakers to ensure maximum protections for animals...

It was November 2022 when, at the request of the Ashland County Sheriff’s Office, our Animal Rescue Team arrived at a property in Ohio that seemed abandoned. Inside two ramshackle barns, filled with cobwebs and feet of filth and manure, there were animals struggling to survive. The horse who would later be named Magnolia had a ruptured eye that had scarred over and was pacing anxiously in her pen as rescuers surveyed the conditions of all the horses.

The federal government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, has devastated many American families. But it has also affected countless numbers of animals, including thousands of domestic and wild animals in puppy mills, research laboratories, zoos and other facilities that are licensed -- and...

The strange saga of a neglected tiger discovered last February in the garage of a deserted Houston home reached a happily-ever-after conclusion this week. Our Cleveland Amory Black Beauty Ranch in Murchison, Texas, the tiger’s home since his rescue, has been given full legal custody of the animal...