Washington -- San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos came out Tuesday in defense of a California law at the center of an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case, describing the challenge to the statute banning the slaughter of certain animals as a potential threat to state authority.

The law against selling, buying, butchering or even holding non-ambulatory or "downer" animals was prompted by revelations that cows at Chino's Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. had been beaten, shocked, dragged by chains and rammed with a forklift by workers attempting to get them to stand for slaughter.