I blogged about some problems with the bill two weeks ago; there's now a revised version, but I'm afraid that it will probably make matters worse.

The new version narrows the proposal, from protecting the employees of a wide range of animal enterprises (including food sellers, agricultural enterprises, zoos, and agricultural fairs) to instead cover only employees of "an entity that lawfully uses animals or animal products for education or research in any exercise of a constitutional right to academic freedom." But the trouble is that there's no well-established meaning of "any exercise of a constitutional right to academic freedom," at least where use of animals and animal products is involved.

The courts have talked in the past about a constitutional right to academic freedom, but they generally haven't precisely defined it. It is pretty clear that professors' speech is protected against criminal punishment, civil liability, and in some instance even firing by public university administrators -- though even there it's not clear whether this is because of some "constitutional right to academic freedom" or because of the general First Amendment freedom of speech. But the courts have not generally focused on a right to use products in the course of research, whether animal products or otherwise.

It's not at all clear that there is any "constitutional right to academic freedom" covering the use in research of animals, or pharmaceutical substances, or weapons, or other products (as opposed to the use in research of speech that is itself protected by the First Amendment, such as survey questions, articles, books, and the like). If, for instance, California banned any experiments on primates, I'm pretty sure this would be quite constitutionally permissible; likewise if the University of California imposed such a limit on its faculty. The government would be restricting conduct because of its noncommunicative impact, and a court would likely conclude that the government has an adequate interest for this restriction (protecting primates); so even if there is a presumptive right to do research using nonspeech conduct -- itself not clear -- that right would be easily trumped by the government interest. So while the UC is an entity that lawfully uses animals or animal products for education or research, I'm inclined to doubt that its use of animals for education and research is in any exercise of a constitutional right to academic freedom.

Now perhaps because of this, courts would interpret the provision nonliterally -- but it's not obvious to me just what interpretation they would use, and in any case it seems to me a mistake to enact a bill that doesn't literally cover what you want it to cover, hoping that courts will eventually fix the problem.