National Institutes of Health (NIH) violated animal rights activists’ First Amendment rights as their social media comments were deleted by the agency (federal appeals court) rule last week.
The agency has been removing all comments on its Facebook and Instagram pages that contain certain keywords related to criticism of the agency’s use of animal testing. Comments containing words like animal, testand cruel This content was singled out for removal as part of a broader policy to remove “off-topic” comments.
Activists from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) filed a lawsuit in 2021, arguing that the practice was a clear violation of commenters’ First Amendment rights and claiming that NIH social media pages are “traditional public forums,” meaning the NIH cannot Enforce any content-based restrictions on speech.
After an initial defeat in lower courts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled last Tuesday that the NIH violated the activists’ First Amendment rights. However, the court disagreed that the comment section of the NIH social media account was a traditional public forum. Instead, the court agreed with NIH attorneys that the comments section was a “limited” public forum “because the government has expressed its intention to limit discussion of these posts to specific topics.”
But even if the NIH is constitutionally allowed to moderate comments based on their content, courts have found the agency’s restrictions on commenters’ speech to be unreasonable. Judge Bradley N. Garcia took the stand.
To illustrate this point, Garcia gave the example of an Instagram post that included a photo of the eyes of a zebrafish killed in an NIH study. “It is unreasonable to assume that comments related to animal testing are irrelevant to a post like this,” Garcia wrote. “However, comments like ‘Animal testing on zebrafish is cruel’ may be filtered out because ‘ “Animals,” “testing,” and “cruelty” are all blocked by NIH’s keyword filter.”
Additionally, Garcia argued that the NIH’s “off-topic” policy was unjustified because it was “inflexible and unresponsive to context” and reviewers were not given the opportunity to challenge the deletion of their comments.
“The permanent and context-free nature of NIH’s speech restrictions reinforces its irrationality, particularly the lack of documented evidence that comments about animal testing seriously undermine NIH’s ability to communicate with citizens about NIH’s work,” Garcia wrote. ability to target. “Governments should exercise caution when imposing any restrictions on speech to ensure that they are not discriminatory and do not unduly censor criticism or exposure of government actions. “
