Court Says UW-Madison Social Media Censorship Illegal

The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s attempt to suppress an animal rights advocate’s comments on its social media pages has been declared unconstitutional by a federal appeals court, reinforcing the limits of government control over public discourse online.

Madeline Krasno, a UW-Madison graduate and former lab worker who spoke out against the school’s animal research practices, brought a lawsuit in 2021 after discovering that her posts were either blocked or hidden from the university’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

The 7th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in her favor on August 1, concluding that the university violated her First Amendment rights by silencing her viewpoint.

We obtained a copy of the opinion for you here.

Now faced with the ruling, UW-Madison must decide whether to revise its moderation policies, disable comment functions on its social platforms, or try to escalate the case to the US Supreme Court. University officials have not indicated which direction they plan to take.

Krasno’s criticism comes from her time spent inside the university’s primate lab, where she worked as an undergraduate. She described disturbing conditions, saying she witnessed monkeys kept in isolation, sometimes escaping, and often displaying stress or aggression after being subjected to research. When she later tried to express these concerns publicly through university-run social media, her posts disappeared.

At one point, the university placed an account-level restriction on her Instagram profile, preventing any of her comments from being seen by the public. Even after that restriction was lifted, the school relied on automated filters that blocked posts containing words such as “lab,” “monkeys,” “torture,” “animal testing,” and “primate.”

UW-Madison defended its use of comment filters by claiming the goal was to keep discussions relevant to each post and manageable for its staff. The court was not persuaded. Judges Ilana Rovner and Doris Pryor found that the university’s platforms, while subject-focused, were still public forums in which viewpoint-based censorship is forbidden. They noted that the school gave staff wide discretion with no written standards for when to block users or what terms to ban, creating a system vulnerable to abuse.

Krasno said that even when her messages were directly related to the university’s content, they were still removed. On a post about the Dairy Cattle Center, she commented, “stop exploiting animals.” That comment was hidden.

According to the court, this action suggested the university was not targeting off-topic remarks but was actively excluding viewpoints it disagreed with.

In a separate opinion, Judge Frank Easterbrook dissented and proposed a different solution. He argued that the university could avoid constitutional issues altogether by shutting down comment sections, eliminating the designation of its accounts as limited public forums.

Krasno has fought similar battles before. She previously challenged the National Institutes of Health after it blocked her comments opposing animal experimentation. That case, like this one, ended with an appellate victory.

The ruling makes clear that public institutions do not get to decide which viewpoints are allowed once they open a space for public dialogue. Government-run platforms cannot function as tools for narrative control while still claiming to uphold constitutional principles.

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