Victory! Court Accepts PETA’s Amicus Brief in NIH Lawsuit
For Immediate Release:
June 5, 2025
Contact:
Brandi Pharris 202-483-7382
In a legal battle involving animal experimenters and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), PETA announces today that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has accepted PETA’s Amicus Brief, which corrects misinformation animal experimenters have presented to the court and exposes federal funding for animal tests that go nowhere.
Experimenters argue that NIH funding cuts to animal testing will cause “irreparable harm,” but PETA’s brief argues that courts should not rely on self-interested information provided by experimenters themselves, pointing to how the lower court relied on misinformation from the University of Washington—home to the Washington National Primate Research Center, which has racked up dozens of violations of federal animal welfare laws, including a monkey who was irradiated to death by an experimenter who ignored her own protocol, and numerous other horrors in its scandal-ridden operation.
That facility is one of seven National Primate Research Centers, which also includes the Oregon National Primate Research Center, a facility so widely considered odious the state legislature is currently considering a bill to shut it down.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
