New Analysis: Animal Welfare Act Enforcement Deteriorates Following SCOTUS Ruling aalberg Mon, 09/29/2025 - 11:52 photo by Jo-Anne McArthur/NEAVS/We Animals October 8, 2025 Washington, DC—The US Department of Agriculture, long known for its lackluster enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), appears in recent years to have drifted even further away from enforcement efforts. Since mid-2024 in particular, according to an Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) report released today, the department has largely abandoned the use of fines to address AWA violations, electing instead to issue official warnings that lack meaningful repercussions. The timing of this shift underscores the potential implications of a recent Supreme Court decision pertaining to fines levied by a federal agency.The report, titled Trends in Animal Welfare Act Enforcement, is an original analysis of actions taken by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA-APHIS) to encourage compliance with the AWA, based on documentation obtained from the agency’s online Animal Welfare and Horse Protection Actions database. AWI analyzed the database’s enforcement-related documents dating from January 2020 (when the database’s AWA documentation begins) to August 2025. The analysis revealed that following the Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision in Securities and Exchange Commission [SEC] v. Jarkesy—in which the court held that the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial applied to assessment of fines by the SEC for securities fraud—there was a precipitous drop in the issuance of fines by USDA-APHIS. In the 14 months following this decision, which could potentially be construed to apply to USDA-APHIS’s assessment of fines under the AWA, USDA-APHIS levied a meager five fines, including just one since the second Trump administration took office in January. This stands in stark contrast to the 63 fines issued in the 14 months preceding the Jarkesy decision. In fact, it is even fewer than the number of fines imposed over a similar time frame during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many facilities were temporarily closed and routine inspections were severely curtailed.Official warnings are not considered enforcement actions, and since 2021, there have been more official warnings issued for AWA violations than all enforcement actions (administrative complaints, confiscations, license suspensions, settlements, and decisions and orders) combined. Furthermore, official warnings’ proportion of total actions seems to be growing: In the year before the Jarkesy decision, official warnings constituted 66% of all actions taken by USDA-APHIS in response to what it identified as AWA violations; in the year following the decision, official warnings constituted 91% of actions taken. Official warnings have been issued even when violations are severe. For example, Alpha Genesis Incorporated (AGI)—which sells and experiments on nonhuman primates—received an official warning earlier this year for the preventable death of 22 monkeys in November 2024. This is the third official warning AGI has received since 2014 for violations that include monkey deaths and escapes.For animals in laboratories, this situation is especially concerning. The issuance of fines appears to be one of USDA-APHIS’s primary enforcement mechanisms against research facilities, as research facilities are exempt from certain AWA enforcement actions, such as license revocations and criminal penalties.If USDA-APHIS cannot or will not issue fines against violators, the AWA’s protections will be severely weakened for the approximately 775,000 warm-blooded animals used in research, testing, and teaching in the United States each year—leaving these animals nearly as vulnerable as the tens of millions of rats, mice, birds, and cold-blooded animals who are not even covered under the AWA.“The USDA’s apparent hesitancy to take meaningful enforcement actions in the wake of the Jarkesy decision is troubling,” said Dr. Joanna Makowska, director of AWI’s Animals in Laboratories Program. “Our government must have an effective mechanism for enforcing its primary federal law regulating the use of animals in research—anything less is unacceptable.”Chronic understaffing at USDA-APHIS—a problem that is only getting worse as the number of facilities the agency is charged with inspecting continues to increase while the number of inspectors decreases—further jeopardizes the welfare of all animals under the AWA’s purview. The agency has lost more than one-third of its inspectors in the last several years, including a 15% decrease in 2025 alone. Meanwhile, between 2021 and 2024, the number of licensees and registrants increased by nearly 50%. Several legislative efforts to strengthen AWA enforcement are under consideration by Congress, including the Better CARE for Animals Act and Goldie’s Act. The Animal Welfare Enforcement Improvement Act, a longstanding AWI priority bill that would close AWA loopholes that allow chronic violators to escape accountability, could be reintroduced soon as well.“Our analysis indicates that the USDA’s historically weak enforcement of the Animal Welfare Act is getting weaker. We are failing millions of animals who deserve, at minimum, robust enforcement of existing law,” said Makowska. “While the long-term repercussions of the Jarkesy decision remain to be seen, the data highlight the department’s struggle to fulfill its most basic responsibilities to these animals. This is a problem that won’t be fixed overnight—but strengthening the AWA itself is a great starting point.” Media Contact Information Kim Meneo, Animal Welfare Institutekim@awionline.org, (202) 446-2116 The Animal Welfare Institute (awionline.org) is a nonprofit charitable organization founded in 1951 and dedicated to alleviating animal suffering caused by people. We seek to improve the welfare of animals everywhere: in agriculture, in commerce, in our homes and communities, in research, and in the wild. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and LinkedIn for updates and other important animal protection news.