The highest court in New York has ruled that a Bronx Zoo elephant is not a legal person and cannot be considered illegally confined.
In a 5-2 decision Tuesday, the New York State Court of Appeals rejected a petition by the animal rights organization Nonhuman Rights Project, affirming lower court rulings. The organization requested a writ of habeas corpus to take Happy, a female Asian elephant brought to the Bronx Zoo in 1977, away from the zoo. The group contended that Happy was a person because elephants possess complex cognitive and emotional capabilities, and therefore as a person was illegally confined to the zoo.
“For centuries, the common law writ of habeas corpus has safeguarded the liberty rights of human beings by providing a means to secure release from illegal custody,” Chief Justice Janet DiFiore wrote in the majority opinion. “Because the writ of habeas corpus is intended to protect the liberty right of human beings to be free of unlawful confinement, it has no applicability to Happy, a nonhuman animal who is not a ‘person’ subjected to illegal detention. Thus, while no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion, the [lower courts] properly granted the motion to dismiss the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and we therefore affirm.”
No part of judicial precedent in New York, or in any other court, state or federal, has ever held that the writ applies to nonhuman animal species, DiFiore continued. Instead, the writ applies specifically and solely to human beings because they are endowed with fundamental rights to liberty recognized by law. In addition, Happy’s confinement was fully in line with zoological trade accreditations and the federal Animal Welfare Act. Furthermore, DiFiore wrote that Nonhuman Rights Project was not actually going to free the elephant, but instead move her to an elephant sanctuary; simply transferring her from one form of confinement to another. That fact was an “implicit acknowledgement” by the organization that Happy does not really have liberty rights.
Finally, the Court warned that granting the elephant such rights “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society.” Quoting a ruling from a similar case in Connecticut, DiFiore stressed that granting habeas corpus to elephants would require the Court to grant similar rights to allow highly intelligent, if not all animals, to bring suit. Granting such rights would thus risk disrupting property rights, the agriculture industry, and scientific research.
“Indeed, followed to its logical conclusion, such a determination would call into question the very premises underlying pet ownership, the use of service animals, and the enlistment of animals in other forms of work,” DiFiore wrote. “With no clear standard for determining which species are entitled to access the writ, who has standing to bring such claims on a nonhuman animal’s behalf, what parameters to apply in determining whether a confinement is ‘unjust,’ and whether ‘release’ from a confinement otherwise authorized by law is feasible or warranted in any particular case, courts would face grave difficulty resolving the inevitable flood of petitions. Likewise, owners of numerous nonhuman animal species—farmers, pet owners, military and police forces, researchers, and zoos, to name just a few—would be forced to answer and defend those actions.”
Happy was captured in the 1970s and brought to the zoo in 1977, when she was just one year old, the Associated Press reported.