9th Circuit Victory: Court Holds Once Again U of Washington Animal Oversight Committee Members Have No Right to Hide Names

The case is now remanded back to the District Court.

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.

Background info: 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.

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