‘PETA v. NIH’ Case Summary
Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. Tabak, et al.
Index Number: 23-5110
Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
In September 2021, PETA Foundation lawyers, joined by counsel from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, filed a lawsuit asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to stop the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from automatically blocking comments containing keywords associated with viewpoints critical of animal experimentation from the agency’s social media pages. The suit was filed on behalf of PETA as well as two animal rights advocates. The plaintiffs alleged that their comments posted on NIH’s Facebook or Instagram pages had been hidden because they were critical of or contained keywords associated with criticism of animal experimentation and the government’s role in supporting it.
The District Court Rules Against the Plaintiffs on Summary Judgment
In April 2022, after filing stipulated facts, the plaintiffs and the government cross-moved for summary judgment. The plaintiffs argued that the NIH Facebook and Instagram pages, which are open for comments from the general public, are public forums. They further argued that automatically hiding comments containing keywords associated with animal advocacy, like “torture” or “PETA,” from public view excludes speech based on viewpoint and unconstitutional content-based restrictions. They also argued that these activities deprive the plaintiffs of the opportunity to read other comments using the blocked keywords.
The court ruled against the plaintiffs in March 2023. Specifically, the court found that a policy requiring comments to be on topic can be objective and workable and that animal advocacy appeared to be an appropriate topic for “focused enforcement” because it was purportedly “a flagrant offending subject matter in the comment threads.” The court only acknowledged NIH’s blocking of keywords like “PETA,” “PETALatino,” and “#stopanimaltesting” in a footnote, dismissing the relevance of these “more persuasive” facts as “an overzealous attempt by an NIH social media manager to tamp down irrelevant posts—many of which happened to include those hashtags.”
PETA Appeals—and Wins!
The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in September 2023. Their appeal reiterated prior arguments that the government’s conduct was illegal viewpoint- and content-based discrimination, arguing, among other things, that the district court had erred in ignoring the extent to which NIH’s conduct would indefinitely block comments that are frequently indisputably on topic.
On July 30, 2024, the court of appeals issued a landmark decision reversing the lower court and directing the lower court to enter a summary judgment in PETA’s favor. Specifically, the court held that NIH’s purported “off-topic” restriction, as implemented through keyword filters, is unreasonable and unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
In the opinion, Judge Bradley N. Garcia wrote the following:
“To say that comments related to animal testing are categorically off-topic when a significant portion of NIH’s posts are about research conducted on animals defies common sense.”
Garcia also noted that the agency’s use of keyword blocking “skews sharply against the appellant’s viewpoint” and warned that government officials must “tread carefully when enforcing any speech restriction to ensure it is not viewpoint discriminatory and does not inappropriately censor criticism or exposure of government actions.” He suggested that NIH’s censorship threatens to “distort public discourse over NIH’s work.”
