The National Institutes of Health (NIH) violated activists’ First Amendment rights when it deleted comments on the NIH Facebook and Instagram pages, according to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Animal rights activists had been posting comments to the NIH’s social media posts to advocate against animal testing.
The agency’s moderation policy prohibited “off-topic posts” and used keyword filters to hide comments containing words such as “animal,” “testing” and “cruel.” Activists’ comments were filtered out and hidden from the public.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) sued, arguing the agency’s social media pages were “traditional public forums” and the government is not allowed to censor speech on the platforms.
A U.S. District Court first ruled the NIH’s content moderation restrictions were reasonable, agreeing with the agency’s claim that it was trying to avoid having social media pages inundated with repetitive “irrelevant” comments.
PETA appealed that decision and the appeals court for the D.C. Circuit made a ruling.
“The government should tread carefully when enforcing any speech restriction to ensure it is not viewpoint discriminatory and does not inappropriately censor criticism or exposure of governmental actions,” Judge Garcia wrote.
The court disagreed, however, that the social media sites were public forums, instead ruling the “NIH intended to create a forum ‘limited solely to the discussion of certain subjects,’” and that “in a limited public forum, speech restrictions may be ‘based on subject matter.’”
In a post on X, PETA reacted to the new ruling, writing, “This decision means NIH cannot censor the public’s outrage over its pointless animal tests!”