Does this include an "object" that a person owns? (This is the way many law makers see dogs, as property of a person). Do these laws apply to dogs, farm animals, or exotic pets? Of course these are the questions people set out to ask and answer. Here we see another interesting issue; this is what is called an over-breadth doctrine. An over-breadth doctrine allows a party to whom the law may constitutionally be applied to challenge the statute on the ground that it violates the First Amendment rights of others. This over-breadth that challenges breed specific legislation states that the legislature overgeneralized because it subjected all members of the target breed to regulation regardless of prior behavior; that is, the breed-specific law is unconstitutional because it reaches both dangerous and docile members of the target breed. However, as the Supreme Court stated in Dandridge v. Williams, "If the classification has some reasonable basis, it does not offend the Constitution simply because the classification is not made with mathematical nicety or because in practice it results in some inequality." The outcome of this case was that the over-breadth was relevant to the case and the first amendment, the regulation imposed did not violate the Equal Protection Clause. During the year of 2001 Washington D.C. created the Pit Bull Public Protection Act. This act would ban new pit bulls from coming into the city, while pit bulls that were already there could stay with very strict restrictions. In large cities pit bulls, at this time, were used less as pets and more for protection of criminals such as pimps and drug dealers. This caused regular people to get pit bulls for protection against the criminals. These cities thought banning the breed completely would solve the issue. Shelters that would receive a pit bull without proper identification would not keep the dog, and these dogs could not be adopted out so they were forced to be put down.
