Krasno v. Mnookin

The University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), a public university, allowed comments on its official Instagram and Facebook accounts. UW had a written policy allowing removal of comments it deemed threatening, profane, off-topic, commercial, or otherwise injurious or illegal. UW’s social-media managers had broad discretion to hide or remove comments that met these criteria. UW also used a keyword filter that automatically hid comments containing certain terms unless UW chose to make them visible. The filter included terms like: abusing, animal testing, biden, cruelty, kill animals, lab, monsters, rot in hell, shame on, testing cats, testing on animals, torturing, trump, and you guys are sick. Madeline Krasno (plaintiff), a UW graduate, had worked in one of UW’s two primate research labs while a student. In fall 2020, UW posted on Instagram about its dairy-cattle center and, separately, a new recreation center. Krasno commented on both posts, criticizing UW’s continued use of primate research labs. UW hid Krasno’s comments and temporarily restricted her account, so all her comments on UW’s Instagram posts were automatically hidden unless UW made them public. Later, UW posted on Facebook about its winter graduating class. Krasno commented, again criticizing UW’s use of primate labs. UW deleted this comment. Krasno sued the university’s chancellor and other officials (defendants) in federal district court, alleging they had violated her First Amendment rights by restricting her Instagram comments, deleting her Facebook comment, and using the keyword filter to hide comments critical of animal testing. UW argued it had not restricted Krasno’s comments for being critical but for being off topic. UW provided evidence that it had not deleted other critical comments. UW also admitted it did not review every comment or delete all off-topic ones. Both sides moved for summary judgment.