Krasno v. Mnookin

Animal advocate Madeline Krasno wanted to shine a light on animal research occurring at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But the university came up with a plan to prevent Krasno—and other animal advocates—from addressing the controversial matter on its social media pages. Using Facebook and Instagram’s keyword-filtering feature, administrators automatically hid from view any comments containing words frequently used by animal advocates—including “@peta,” “primate,” “animal testing,” and “cruelty.” The public university’s attempt to cleanse its social media pages of criticism related to its animal research amounts to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

On March 17, 2023, FIRE joined the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit urging it to join numerous other courts in recognizing that government-operated social media pages are interactive public forums that must remain free from viewpoint discrimination. As the brief argues, the university’s attempt to justify its use of keyword blocking to prohibit off-topic comments is not only viewpoint-discriminatory, but also unreasonable. A blanket ban on every comment including one of the forbidden words means that even on-topic comments are still hidden from view. 

The Supreme Court of the United States has called social media the modern-day town square. When government actors operate social media sites, they shouldn’t have the power to decide which views are heard, and which are not.