A federal appeals court struck down Tuesday a National Institutes of Health social media policy that automatically blocked posts containing specific words often used by animal rights advocates.
In a victory for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, as well as free-speech advocates, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit concluded the social media policy violated the First Amendment.
“The permanent and context-insensitive nature of NIH’s speech restriction reinforces its unreasonableness, especially absent record evidence that comments about animal testing materially disrupt NIH’s ability to meet its objective of communicating with citizens about NIH’s work,” Judge Bradley Garcia wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
Garcia added that the policy “skews sharply against [PETA’s] viewpoint that the agency should stop funding animal testing by filtering terms such as ‘torture’ and ‘cruel,’ not to mention terms previously included such as ‘PETA’ and ‘#stopanimaltesting.'”
