In Colorado, there’s a zoo with five elephants who aren’t doing so great but because they’re animals—not humans—they are essentially prisoners who can’t vow for release.
An animal rights group, Nonhuman Rights Project, brought this to the attention of the state’s Supreme Court. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the elephants have no legal right to pursue their release because they’re not human.
An actual real quote from the ruling per NBC News, “Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person… and because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.” Seriously, that sounds like what I would say to explain to my toddler—well, not the habeas corpus part—as to why we can’t bring an elephant home when we visit the Philadelphia Zoo.
A Colorado Court Ruled That Elephants Aren’t Humans and Can’t Be Released From the Zoo
The activist group brought this up to the higher court after believing that the elephants were showing signs of brain damage as a result of their stay at the zoo. The Nonhuman Rights Project aimed to relocate the animals to one of the two elephant sanctuaries in the U.S. That didn’t anywhere in court as the zoo argued the elephants don’t want to join others or want a change of scenery.
If you think is all ridiculous—the idea of arguing over whether an animal has rights or not because it’s not a human—this very same case happened in 2022 in New York. That was when Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo, was the subject of another Nonhuman Rights Project movement to release him from captivity before a 5-2 decision by the Court of Appeals determined human rights do not apply to animals.
This is likely not the last time the group will attempt to push the envelope and fight for animal rights in zoos. That being said, the one thing that is interesting about all of this, is if even just one case goes their way and an animal is given human rights per se, I imagine a giant can of worms could open up. That’s likely why these courts are doing what they can to avoid that.
Let’s just hope the elephants are doing okay in their habitats.
The post Elephants Aren’t People and Can’t Sue to Leave the Zoo, Says Colorado Court appeared first on VICE.
