Ninth Circuit Victory: Court Holds Once Again that University of Washington Animal Oversight Committee Members Have No Right to Hide Names; PETA Statement

For Immediate Release:
December 4, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Seattle –

Please see the following statement from PETA Deputy General Counsel and Director of Litigation Asher Smith regarding the decision of the 9^th Circuit Court, released today, holding that University of Washington (UW) animal experimentation oversight committee members have no constitutional right to keep their identities secret. A panel of three 9^th Circuit judges took less than two weeks after oral argument to issue a landmark decision in favor of appellants PETA and the Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN), reversing a preliminary injunction granted by a Seattle-based United States District Court. This is the third time in three years that a district court decision enjoining UW from disclosing information in response to public records requests that would have identified members of the UW Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) has been reversed:

This is a major victory for transparency and a blow to all institutions that take taxpayer money for experiments on animals but try to shirk their accountability to taxpayers. Who sits on these committees in publicly funded laboratories and what they do is everyone’s business, and these individuals cannot simply choose to operate in secrecy. As PETA explained to the 9^th Circuit, access to IACUC member identities is vital in allowing the public to investigate serious concerns about potentially illegal conflicts of interest: If the oversight body is improperly constituted, it is operating illegally and should have no authority to approve animal experiments.

PETA and NARN were supported at the Ninth Circuit for the third time by the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, which submitted an amicus brief on behalf of 12 media organizations, including the Seattle Times.

The case is now remanded back to the District Court, where PETA will continue to oppose any further efforts by UW IACUC members to use the legal process to evade basic public oversight of their work as members of a governing body of an important state agency.  PETA was represented by Peter Hawkes at Angeli Law Group LLC.

For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.