Sometimes, life’s most important events are the ones you hoped wouldn’t happen. In March 2022, to Rebecca Cary’s dismay, the US Supreme Court agreed to hear a pork industry challenge to California’s Proposition 12, the Prevention of Cruelty to Farm Animals Act. The law precludes the sale of pork in California from pigs that are “confined in a cruel manner.”

Cary is a managing attorney at the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which served as an intervenor in the case. Starting in 2019, Cary successfully defended Proposition 12 alongside the State of California as the case moved up the judicial ladder. She worried that a Supreme Court defeat would jeopardize animal protection laws nationwide.

When the Court did decide to take the case, Cary coordinated work on many fronts — from research to media strategy to gathering amicus briefs and more. In May 2023, when the Court ruled 9–0 against the industry’s main claim, HSUS staffers on a video call shed tears of joy.

Animal welfare has been Cary’s passion since childhood; today, she shares her Silver Spring, Maryland, home with three rescue cats, teaches animal law in the DC area and is a frequent visitor to local farm animal sanctuaries. In 2010, she went to work for the Humane Society: “a dream come true.” Sitting in the Supreme Court’s chamber during oral arguments in October 2022, “I really felt the gravitas of all that has happened in that room,” she says.

When the Supreme Court judgment came down, she kept glancing at the word “affirmed” in the document. Has she framed it? “I haven’t. I should.”