U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rules that University of Washington Committee Members Have No Anonymity

In a major win for PETA, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rules that members of a public animal care committee at the University of Washington have no right under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to keep their identities secret. In 2021, PETA submitted public records requests for the appointment letters for members of the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), suspecting that its members may have illegal conflicts of interest. PETA expects this decision to have far-reaching consequences and make it more difficult for IACUCs to operate secretly or without accountability to taxpayers, who fund experiments.