‘PETA v. University of Washington’; ‘Sullivan v. University of Washington’ Case Summaries

Case Name: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. v. University of Washington
Index Number: 20-2-18442-0
Court: Superior Court of Washington in and for King County

Case Name: Sullivan, et al. v. University of Washington, et al.
Index Number: 2:22-cv-00204-RAJ
Court: U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington

In December 2020, PETA Foundation lawyers—along with local co-counsel—filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court under Washington state’s Public Records Act (PRA). The lawsuit was part of PETA’s work to inform the public about the University of Washington (UW) and its Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) and hold them accountable for their apparent violations of animal protection laws and their use of primates in experiments. Specific public records requests that UW denied or unreasonably closed include requests for documents detailing the WaNPRC’s apparent financial, leadership, and animal care deficiencies—such as quarterly reports prepared by the WaNPRC and delivered to the National Scientific Advisory Board (NSAB)—and requests for video recordings and photographs from two WaNPRC laboratories.

Discovery Yields Withheld Documents and Surprising Admissions

As a result of document requests and depositions, PETA obtained numerous withheld documents and surprising admissions. For example, although the withheld NSAB reports were maintained together with reports that were produced, UW—as it eventually admitted—didn’t produce certain reports until months after the lawsuit was filed and after we had begun pursuing discovery. We learned that these withheld reports revealed the following:

• “[A] Gordian knot of financial problems” at the WaNPRC
• NSAB’s 2019 conclusion that there was a “seemingly adversarial working relationship” between WaNPRC leadership and scientists, which was found to be “counterproductive for the Primate Center, threaten[ing] the Center’s science”
• Previously undisclosed reports of animal deaths

We also learned that UW’s claim that “no videographic or photographic records of nonhuman primates were stored” by the two laboratories at issue was misleading In reality, the WaNPRC had implemented a policy whereby all videos and photos taken in its laboratories would be reviewed by the Center’s leadership and then deleted if, in the words of one experimenter during deposition testimony, they did not “communicat[e] our science” in the way deemed “most relevant.” As elaborated in deposition testimony by other UW personnel, what this meant in practice was that favorable videos and photos—those showing images that UW wanted to promote for public viewing on its website, such as photos of monkeys with “gingerbread houses or pumpkins for Halloween”—were kept and those that did not further this goal were marked as drafts and deleted. One experimenter volunteered that deleted videos would have shown things like monkeys engaged in “pacing behaviors.”

UW personnel admitted that the school had maintained no log of the destroyed records. WaNPRC’s former director couldn’t estimate how many photos and videos had been deleted, including whether they numbered in the hundreds.

As we learned through additional discovery, this was part of an apparent culture of secrecy at UW. The school’s policies with respect to photos and videos taken in its laboratories, produced in discovery, seemed to have one primary goal: to keep records out of the hands of PETA, other animal advocates, and the public.

Notably, these policies contain a key admission: “All images and videos taken inside [WaNPRC] facilities or for WaNPRC research projects are considered records subject to Washington State Law: RCW 40.14 for records retention and disposition; and RCW 42.56 for public records requests.”

PETA Wins in Summary Judgment and Penalty Phases

Following discovery, PETA won a summary judgment victory on these issues, including this recognition by the court:

“The lack of any policy/system which identifies videos/photos which are being destroyed prevents [UW] from complying with the requirements of the PRA.”

—King County Superior Court

The parties then negotiated over the scope of documents that would be produced as relevant to the penalty phase of the litigation following a PETA victory on a motion to compel further document discovery. As a result of this discovery, we learned that UW leadership had long feared that “PETA will use the information [contained in quarterly reporting] to construct a uniformly negative narrative regarding the Center and its research to support their agenda which is, of course, cessation of all use of animals,” because “most of the information which might qualify for redaction under the federal guidelines would be accessible under our state PRA.” We also learned that in September 2020—shortly after receiving relevant document requests—the WaNPRC director had circulated “some great reminders of how to respond” to PETA inquiries: guidance from an animal experimentation industry group instructing institutions on “combatting a PETA campaign” and “preparing for a long-term animal rights campaign,” which notably advised that records-retention policies be revised, presumably in order to avoid turning over photos and videos.

Following briefing by the parties, the court ordered UW to pay PETA $539,902.45, plus thousands more in unpaid interest. This included both attorneys’ fees and $250,000 in penalties.

UW IACUC Members File Suit in Response to New Records Requests by PETA

In 2021, PETA submitted public records requests for the appointment letters of members of the UW Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), suspecting that one reason the UW IACUC had apparently been so ineffective in protecting animals in UW laboratories was that its members had illegal conflicts of interest. For example, PETA had been able to identify that UW IACUC members categorized as “nonaffiliated” and/or “nonscientists” included individuals who had worked at UW, whose spouses had worked there, who had donated to the school, who had used animals in experiments, and who, in one case, had served as the executive director of a major lobbying group promoting animal experimentation.

IACUC Members’ First Lawsuit and PETA’s First Appellate Victory

Past and present UW IACUC members filed a lawsuit to block disclosure, arguing that they had a freedom of association right to operate in secrecy. PETA intervened in the lawsuit, and in response to our arguments, the head of the UW IACUC made a key admission confirming our suspicions: In her view, it was acceptable for recent UW employees to serve as the designated “nonaffiliated” UW IACUC member. We also rebutted accusations of purported “harassment” cited by UW IACUC members. For example, we showed that a member of the public, who the plaintiffs argued had threatened them by calling them Nazis and mentioning the name of the UW IACUC chair’s cat, was actually a retired UW professor—to whom the chair had disclosed the name of her cat in friendly conversation—who had used his two minutes during a public meeting to politely recite a famous aphorism from a Nobel laureate refugee of Nazi-occupied Poland, Isaac Bashevis Singer, to the effect that “[i]n relation to [animals], all people are Nazis; for them it is an eternal Treblinka.”

In 2022, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted the UW IACUC members a preliminary injunction based on its view that by serving on an IACUC, members might be engaging in protected free expression. We appealed.

In February 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in PETA’s favor. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit held that members of an IACUC have no right under the U.S. Constitution to keep their identities secret. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit agreed with us, explaining that IACUC members have no role other than ensuring that experimenters follow federal animal welfare law, including rules requiring IACUCs to reflect views other than those of the animal experimentation industry. The court noted specifically that the appointment letters exist “only because the Committee members were appointed by the University according to statutory and regulatory criteria to ensure diverse representation.”

UW IACUC Members’ Second Lawsuit and PETA’s Second Appellate Victory

UW IACUC members sued again, this time alleging injuries under various Washington state laws and state and federal constitutional provisions, including the 14^th Amendment and the right to informational privacy, because of alleged threats to their constitutional right to “informational privacy” and “personal security and bodily integrity.”

In addition to challenging the plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction on these grounds, we also argued—in our preliminary injunction opposition and in a motion to dismiss—that the named plaintiffs lacked standing because the purported basis of their injuries (disclosure of their names to PETA) had already occurred, either via prior UW public records disclosures or due to the fact that the UW IACUC chair’s name was already public information.

After the district court issued a nearly identical preliminary injunction, we appealed again, and in December 2023 we won again. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit held that neither named plaintiff had standing because they did not furnish “evidence necessary to satisfy [their] burden of establishing subject matter jurisdiction” and because the UW IACUC chair “cannot represent the IACUC’s institutional interests in her role as the chair of the IACUC” because state law only allows the state attorney general to sue to vindicate UW’s interests—otherwise, UW would be “on both sides of the litigation.”

The Ninth Circuit ordered that the entire litigation be dismissed without further instructions, as “no live federal claims remain in the case.”

UW IACUC Members’ Third Lawsuit and PETA’s Third Appellate Victory

Despite the end of the latter litigation, UW IACUC members and UW seemed determined to find a basis to continue the fight and establish a judicial precedent for continuing to keep UW IACUC members’ identities secret. UW subsequently informed UW IACUC members that it had received other public records requests that, while not directly seeking the disclosure of UW IACUC members’ identities, “might result” in such disclosure, and invited Plaintiffs to seek an injunction preventing it. One of those requests was from PETA, which sought documents, including pricing sheets and inventory lists, relating to “discounted” primates and other animals sold by UW. Another was from Northwest Animal Rights Network (NARN), which sought documents concerning primates housed at UW facilities that were excepted from the AWA’s requirement to socially house animals. UW IACUC members filed a third lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington with new named plaintiffs, premised on the same grounds as their second lawsuit—without naming or informing PETA or NARN.

Once PETA and NARN learned of the filing, they moved to intervene and once again opposed plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction. Plaintiffs’ motion was largely identical to their filing in the second lawsuit, and was opposed by PETA and NARN on similar grounds. In March 2024, the District Court once again issued a preliminary injunction in plaintiffs’ favor.

 PETA and NARN appealed, arguing that plaintiffs have no constitutional privacy interest in the mere fact that they are members of a state governing body performing an official function. In December 2024, less than two weeks after oral argument, we won again. Specifically, the Ninth Circuit reversed the District Court because it held that plaintiffs “are not likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that UW’s disclosure of their identities as members of the IACUC would violate their constitutional right to informational privacy, because the information the [IACUC members] seek to keep private is not implicated by this right.” This was premised on the fact that “basic ‘biographical data’” that would identify plaintiffs as UW IACUC members “is not highly sensitive personal information, and thus categorically does not ‘implicate the right to privacy.’” To support the latter conclusion, which required comment on the status of the UW IACUC, the Ninth Circuit cited back to our appellate win from 2023 for the proposition that the UW IACUC was created solely to discharge a government purpose.

The Ninth Circuit remanded the case to the District Court. This litigation remains pending.