PETA’s Top Lawyer, Jeff Kerr, on Unique First Amendment Lawsuit Seeking ‘Speech’ from Monkeys Imprisoned by NIH 

Bernadette talks with attorney Jeff Kerr from PETA about the first-of-its-kind lawsuit, filed this month, that made headlines in The Washington Post, and seeks to enforce PETA’s right to receive communications from what are called in law, “willing speakers”—the macaque monkeys Beamish, Sam Smith, Nick Nack, and Guinness, who have spent years in cages and being experimented on at the NIMH laboratory of experimenter Elisabeth Murray.

Anthropologists and other scientists have studied macaque and other primate communications for decades. Macaques communicate effectively and intentionally through gestures, body language, and vocalizations—all of which constitute speech under the law. Many of their communications are intelligible to humans generally, and PETA and other experts can analyze that speech on a deeper level to share their stories with the world.

As alleged in the complaint, PETA’s suit follows years of NIH’s attempts to conceal what goes on in its laboratories from animal advocates and the public by refusing to comply with public information laws, banning PETA executives from its campus, and infamously unconstitutionally censoring animal advocates’ speech on NIH’s public social media pages.

Learn more about how you can support PETA and help win this lawsuit as well as support all the ways PETA is working to end animal testing in laboratories at PETA.org.

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