PETA Expands Lawsuit, Alleges Free Speech Violations by OHSU

For Immediate Release:
October 7, 2020

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

PETA’s open records lawsuit seeking videos of alcohol experiments on prairie voles at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) has just become a First Amendment and state equal protection lawsuit. An amended complaint was filed with the Multnomah County Circuit Court today, and a copy is available here.

During the discovery process of the lawsuit, which was filed in April, PETA obtained internal OHSU e-mails revealing that after PETA spoke out against experiments in which 150 prairie voles were given alcohol, supposedly to study male fidelity, experimenters apparently deleted videos of the experiments in order to ensure that they would not “fall into the wrong hands.” OSHU then misled PETA about the videos’ existence for months.

“At its core, the First Amendment forbids public entities such as OHSU from restricting speech in ways that favor some viewpoints over others,” says PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo. “OHSU cannot pick and choose who gets access to its public records based on whether it agrees with the opinion of the requester.”

Earlier this year, the court ordered OHSU to release 74 videos of “junk food” experiments on monkeys after the university denied PETA’s open records request. Excerpts of the videos may be seen here.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist worldview that other animals are inferior, so it’s acceptable to exploit them. For more information, please visit PETA.org.