VICTORY! State Supreme Court Sides With PETA Against LSU in Public Records Case
Update (June 28, 2024): VICTORY! In a huge win for animals and government transparency, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in PETA’s favor and ordered that Louisiana State University (LSU) can’t keep public records about Christine Lattin’s deadly experiments on sparrows hidden.
The university has fought PETA to keep Lattin’s records secret since 2019, saying that it had no records or obligation to provide records that it did have. The state supreme court’s decision compels the university to finally follow the state’s public records law and turn over documents and videos relating to her experiments.
The university had claimed that some of the documents were governed by federal law and therefore not subject to disclosure. The court disagreed, finding that no federal law requires that the records at issue, to which state law applies, be kept, compelling their disclosure as public records.
Lattin has made a sickening career out of kidnapping sparrows from their natural homes and subjecting them to various types of torment, including pumping them full of sex hormones and then exposing them to terrifying predator calls. In other recent experiments, she has tested birds’ fear of unfamiliar objects by starving them for hours and then putting items—such as blinking lights, pink puffs, and cocktail umbrellas—near their food dishes to see how readily the birds would approach. Then she killed them and examined their brains.
As soon as we review the records, we’ll let you know the new details concerning Lattin’s experiments on birds. In the meantime, please take action here to urge LSU to end her cruelty.
Originally posted on December 15, 2020
PETA has filed a lawsuit that seeks to compel Louisiana State University (LSU) to disclose records—as required by the Louisiana Public Records Act—related to experimenter Christine Lattin’s taxpayer-funded experiments on sparrows.
Louisiana’s residents have a right to know if their tax dollars are funding bird abuse in LSU’s laboratories. PETA looks forward to receiving these records so that we can show the public how sparrows lived and died for Lattin’s cruel experiments.
PETA Challenges Experiments on Birds at LSU
Lattin is conducting experiments involving trapping sparrows in their natural homes, pumping them with sex hormones, exposing them to terrifying calls from predators, and then killing them.
PETA submitted seven requests for public records to LSU from May 30, 2019, to June 9, 2020. They included four requests for veterinary care and disposition records—i.e., records documenting the deaths of birds via deliberate killing when experiments ended—for birds used in Lattin’s laboratory. To date, LSU has not provided all records requested by PETA and even misleadingly claimed that some of the requested records do not exist.
We also requested correspondence related to Lattin’s prospective or planned trapping of or experimentation on birds, video records related to her experiments, and other records.
This isn’t the first time that LSU has tried to cover up the truth. USA Today recently sued the university after it refused to release reports on sexual misconduct allegations against one of its football players.
Take Action for Birds Trapped in Laboratories
House sparrows are one of the most widespread and abundant songbirds in the world today. They’re also monogamous, usually only breeding with one partner for a season, and both parents nurture and feed their young.
Lattin must not continue her reign of terror on birds. Killing these sensitive, trusting beings who choose to live in such close proximity to humans is unjust and wrong.
