Fox Hunters in the U.K. Want Protected Status Under Discrimination Law

[Pelican Press 0]

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Fox Hunters in the U.K. Want Protected Status Under Discrimination Law

English fox hunters have tried, for years, to push back against a nearly 20-year-old

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on their beloved sport.

The centuries-old tradition of using packs of dogs to chase and ***** foxes — or any wild mammals — became ******** in England in 2005, after a long parliamentary struggle driven by campaigners and lawmakers who opposed it on animal ******** grounds.

So far, the law has stood, and fox hunting ******** hugely unpopular among the general public: 80 percent of people in Britain think it should remain ********, according to

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, a polling company.

Now, a pro-hunting activist has a new plan of *******.

Ed Swales, the activist, founded

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, a lobby group that aims to protect hunting with dogs and other forms of hunting, in early 2022. He wants to use Britain’s Equality Act — which protects people from discrimination because of their age, race, sexuality or religion, among other things — to classify a pro-hunting stance as a

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.

Mr. Swales, 55, said he was preparing to bring a series of anti-discrimination lawsuits in the hope of setting a legal precedent that could, eventually, help reverse the fox-hunting ban.

“We’ve been doing this for millennia,” he said. Hunting is “literally part of our cultural heritage.”

Hunting itself is

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in England. ********* deer, rabbits, duck and some other animals is

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during

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, with permission from the landowner and a **** license.

But the hunting community is

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for an anticipated challenge by Britain’s new Labour government, which pledged to ban trail hunting — where dogs follow a deliberately ***** scent trail, usually of fox ******, instead of a real fox — in its election

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.

The British Hound Sports Association, which promotes and governs hunting with dogs in the U.K., says that by simulating traditional fox hunting, trail hunting allows the community to continue “

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” despite the ban.

But animal rights activists say trail hunting can be a smoke screen for ******** fox hunting, because trails frequently run through land where foxes live, and foxhounds cannot always tell the difference between a fox and an artificial scent.

Last year, Chief Superintendent Matt Longman, England’s police lead on fox hunting, said that ******** hunting was “

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,” with trail hunts frequently taking place in natural fox habitats.

“Foxes often end up getting caught and ******* by the dogs regardless,” said Josh Milburn, a lecturer in political philosophy at Loughborough University who studies animal rights.

Late last month, Mr. Swales sent out a survey to fellow hunters to try to find potential discrimination cases. He said many shared instances of verbal ****** or intimidation during recent hunting excursions. And this year, two

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canceled events for

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after campaigns from anti-hunting activists. “They got told, ‘We are canceling you because we got so much pressure from the anti-hunt brigade,’” Mr. Swales said.

Some experts said that the planned discrimination lawsuits were a distraction from the debate over animal rights, which hunters with dogs have already lost in the court of public opinion. “In making this argument that fox hunters are the persecuted group, they’re trying, I think, to shift the conversation from talking about foxes to talking about people,” Dr. Milburn said.

Others questioned the idea that those who hunt with dogs — a

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that has traditionally included some of Britain’s wealthiest landowners — needed special protection.

“Here we have an argument being made that in fact some of the most privileged in our society should also be protected on the basis of their shared activity chasing and ******** a terrified wild animal,” Edie Bowles, the executive director of the Animal Law Foundation, a legal research charity, wrote in an email.

Several lawyers and academics who study discrimination said Mr. Swales’s argument might have some success, but the bar would be high. Under Britain’s 2010 Equality Act, a

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must “be a belief and not an opinion or viewpoint” and it must “not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”

“The test requires that the belief be genuinely held and that it be sufficiently cogent and weighty and coherent,” said Colm O’Cinneide, a professor of constitutional and human rights law at University College London. A mere political opinion would not pass muster, he said: “There needs to be some sort of belief structure or framework.”

Experts said that a protected belief could be easier to argue than trying to define hunters as a

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—

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— which Mr. Swales has also proposed.

Speaking at a

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in late July, he claimed that his advisers had told him that “the qualifications of an ******* group, there are five of them — we hit every one, straight in the bull’s-eye,” which he reiterated in interviews with The New York Times.

“The legal assessment is that we would qualify for both categories,” he said on Thursday.

But he has since backed off from the idea of starting with the ********* group argument, saying his team would prepare protected belief arguments instead. “Pick the lowest hanging fruit first,” he said, paraphrasing his legal team.

Hunters have already tried, and *******, to argue that bans infringe

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.

In 2007, a belief in fox hunting was explicitly

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in Scotland’s courts, where a judge found that “a person’s belief in his right to engage in an activity which he carries on for pleasure or recreation, however fervent or passionate,” did not compare to protected beliefs or religion, and therefore would not be covered under human rights law.

And in 2009, the ********* Court of Human Rights

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that the ban on fox hunting with dogs did not violate human rights.

“If hunting can be shown to be more than a recreational activity, perhaps as part of a belief system in human supremacy over animals or human dominion over the earth, then a protected belief system could work,” Dr. John Adenitire, who teaches animal rights law at Queen Mary, University of London, wrote in an email.

For Mr. Swales, it is now or never.

His push comes after years of stewing about restrictions on hunting — without, he says, enough of a ****** back from the hunting community.

“All we do is sit here and talk about it and drink sherry and bemoan and bewail our situation,” he said. “And nobody actually does anything.”

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