Colorado’s highest court has ruled in favour of the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, saying five elephants at the facility do not have the legal right to pursue their release because they are not human.
Per a statement from the zoo in Colorado Springs, an animal rights group called the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) filed a lawsuit in June 2023 asking for the release of five elephants to accredited elephant sanctuaries in the US.
The lawsuit was dismissed, with the Nonhuman Rights Project appealing the decision and taking it to the Colorado Supreme Court in June 2024. On January 21, the court rejected the group’s argument.
The court said in its ruling: “It bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically. Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person as that term is used in the habeas corpus statute. And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”
The US zoo said: “While we’re happy with this outcome, we are disappointed that it ever came to this. For the past 19 months, we’ve been subjected to their misrepresented attacks, and we’ve wasted valuable time and money responding to them in courts and in the court of public opinion.”
Last year, the zoo celebrated raising $5 million for conservation efforts, including more than a million dollars for African elephants, it added.
“Majestic animals” to remain at zoo
The Nonhuman Rights Project’s statement is as follows: “This Colorado Supreme Court opinion perpetuates a clear injustice, stating that unless an individual is human they have no right to liberty, no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be’.
“Future courts will reject this notion, as judges in the United States and around the world have already begun to do. As with other social justice movements, early losses are expected as we challenge an entrenched status quo that has allowed Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo to be relegated to a lifetime of mental and physical suffering.”
The ruling from the Colorado supreme court comes after a New York court ruled in 2022 that an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo was not legally a person and would remain there. This was also brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project.
Images courtesy of Molly Condit
