The NIH and HHS are violating the First Amendment by suppressing comments that contain keywords associated with criticism of animal experimentation on government-run Facebook and Instagram pages.
WENDY DAVIS: The Biden Administration is violating the First Amendment by suppressing comments that contain keywords associated with criticism of animal experimentation — including “mouse,” “test,” and “cruel” — on government-run Facebook and Instagram pages, animal rights’ activists say in a new lawsuit.
The complaint alleges that the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services use automated filters to hide comments that might express criticism of animal testing. Those filters automatically suppress comments that contain words and phrases such as #stopanimaltesting, monkey, mouse, and PETA, according to the complaint…
“Defendants’ practice of hiding comments containing words associated with animal rights advocacy, including the name of a well-known animal rights organization, is a viewpoint-discriminatory and content-based restriction on speech that infringes plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights,” the lawsuit alleges. “It violates plaintiffs’ right to speak in a public forum and their right to read the speech of others who have used blocked keywords in comments on defendants’ social media pages”…
The complaint notes that some activists have found a workaround — such as changing the spelling or spacing of words that trigger the filters. For instance, one PETA employee was able to publicly post a comment that substituted the words “an1mals” for “animals,” and “expts” for “experiments”. SOURCE…
JONATHAN TURLEY: The lawsuit filed in People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Collins, No. 1:21-cv-02380 (D.D.C.)… was brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and the Animal Legal Defense Fund after the government blocked comments on opposing animal testing on the agencies’ social media sites…
The Complaint alleges that NIH and HHS are blocking comments containing keywords associated with viewpoints critical of animal testing from the agencies’ social media pages:… #stopanimaltesting, #stoptesting, #stoptestingonanimals, Animal(s), animalitos, animales, Chimpanzee(s), chimp(s), Primate(s), Marmoset(s), Cats, gatos [i.e., Spanish for “cats”], Monkey(s), monkies, Mouse, mice, Experiment, Test(ing), testing facility, Stop, PETA, PETALatino, Suomi,1 Harlow2, Hurt, hurting, Kill, Torture(s), torturing, Torment(ing), Cruel, Revolting…
The lawsuit has ample support in the case law… in Knight First Amendment Institute v. Trump, 928 F.3d 226 (2d Cir. 2019), the Second Circuit held that President Trump could not block users from his @realDonaldTrump account… Notably, it also comes at a time when the Administration and many Democratic leaders, like President Joe Biden, have called on private companies to engage in massive censorship programs on social media… The com
What is interesting is that this is a lawsuit that is likely to garner support on the left from some of the same people who are calling for censorship of “disinformation” and “misinformation.” The anti-free speech movement is abandoning bright line rules in favor of judgments on what is true and what is false or misleading.
In the last few years, we have seen an increasing call for private censorship from Democratic politicians and liberal commentators. Faculty and editors are now actively supporting modern versions of book-burning with blacklists and bans for those with opposing political views…
Free speech advocates are facing a generational shift that is now being reflected in our law schools, where free speech principles were once a touchstone of the rule of law. As millions of students are taught that free speech is a threat and that “China is right” about censorship, these figures are shaping a new society in their own intolerant images.
The most chilling aspect of this story is how many on left applaud such censorship. A new poll shows roughly half of the public supporting not just corporate censorship but government censorship of anything deemed “misinformation”. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: