In a boost for animal rights advocates, a U.S. appeals court ruled that a National Institutes of Health policy for monitoring comments posted to its online forums violated the First Amendment because the agency made a point of removing remarks about animal testing.
At issue was an effort by the NIH to exclude “off-topic” discussions about its work. To accomplish this, the agency sought to exclude certain terms from reader comments on its forums and did so by using a common tactic called keyword blocking. Among the words that were blocked were “animal,” “mouse,” “monkey,” “primate,” “torture,” “cruel,” “experiment,” and “#stopanimaltesting.”
In doing so, however, the agency violated free speech rights of people who responded to various announcements and updates the NIH posted about its research, according to a lawsuit filed in 2021 by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and two activists. In their view, the NIH sought to muffle the views of people who opposed animal testing and wanted to discuss this online.
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