Education
PETA alleges UMass Amherst and UMass Chan Medical School are trying to keep the committees that oversee their animal research “in the shadows.”
Animal welfare organization PETA is taking the University of Massachusetts Amherst and UMass Chan Medical School to court, accusing both institutions of illegally withholding records on animal research oversight.
Filed in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday, the dual lawsuits double down on PETA’s public records requests for information on each school’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, the federally mandated panel charged with reviewing and approving experiments on animals.
PETA alleges UMass Amherst and UMass Chan are trying to keep their respective committees “in the shadows” by redacting public records and withholding members’ names. The animal rights group further argues that both schools claimed inapplicable exemptions under Massachusetts public records law.
“Committee members are public employees at public universities, and the law is clear that the people paying the bills have a right to know who’s making decisions about animals’ lives behind laboratory doors,” PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo said in a statement.
UMass Amherst did not respond to a request for comment. For its part, UMass Chan declined to comment on the pending litigation but said it is “committed to upholding the highest standards of laboratory animal welfare in its research programs.”
On its website, the medical school says mice, rats, and zebrafish make up nearly 95% of the animals used in its research, which has “helped advance treatments for some of the most intractable diseases of our time,” such as HIV, cancer, diabetes, and ALS.
“We are dedicated to rigorous compliance with all regulations governing the ethical and humane treatment of animals in research and we strive to abide by all policies and laws concerning the care of animals, which is an integral part of the institution’s research work,” UMass Chan added.
The lawsuits follow months of back-and-forth between the schools and PETA, which initially requested several years’ worth of UMass Amherst IACUC notices, agendas, and meeting minutes in October 2025.
According to PETA, UMass Amherst produced the requested materials back in March but redacted members’ names and a “plethora” of other information, claiming exemptions for “deliberative” material and “trade secrets.”
PETA submitted a separate records request to UMass Chan in January, seeking the names of its IACUC members and copies of the committee’s notices, agendas, and meeting minutes for the year prior.
According to PETA’s lawsuit, UMass Chan produced some of the requested information and vowed to disclose committee members’ names, only to walk back its promise days later. In doing so, the medical school purportedly cited privacy and security exemptions to public records law.
In its lawsuit, PETA says UMass Amherst tried to claim the same exemptions in 2022, when it withheld some committee records in response to an earlier PETA records request. PETA sued, and UMass Amherst ultimately disclosed the committee’s roster as part of a 2025 settlement.
That same year, PETA flagged allegations of animal mistreatment at UMass Chan to state and federal authorities, which later resulted in the the U.S. Department of Agriculture identifying two infractions. Neither incident outlined in the USDA report resulted in adverse effects for the animals in question, and the medical school took corrective action.
With its latest litigation, PETA is once again seeking to take UMass to task and put a spotlight on animal research oversight.
“PETA is going to court to drag these committees out of the shadows and hold UMass to the same transparency standard the law demands of every taxpayer-funded institution,” Guillermo vowed.
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