Original Article: https://blog.theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/court-elephant-not-person/

“While no one disputes the impressive capabilities of elephants, we reject petitioner’s arguments that it is entitled to seek the remedy of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf,” wrote chief judge Janet DiFiore. “Habeas corpus is a procedural vehicle intended to secure the liberty rights of human beings who are unlawfully restrained, not nonhuman animals.”

It was a highly controversial case that was filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), a Florida-based animal civil rights organization, against the Bronx Zoo. NhRP wanted Happy, a 51-year-old female elephant, to be transferred to an animal sanctuary.

In an interview last year, Steven Wise, NhRP’s founder and president, related to the National Geographic that Happy is a “depressed elephant”. According to him, “elephants are evolved to move — Happy just stands there.”

NhRP wanted Happy to be transferred to an accredited animal sanctuary where she could mix with other elephants, intelligent and social creatures like her.

But, in an email response to NhRP, zoo director James Breheny wrote: “Happy is not languishing. She is quite content and evaluated frequently by the people that know her best including the veterinarians that have cared for her for years as well as the keepers who interact with Happy for hours every day.”

He also stated that Happy does not live alone because another elephant named Patty lives next to her, separated only by a fence. The two elephants communicate with each other, and even touch each other with their trunk.

But efforts to put them together in a single enclosure have been in vain. “Neither animal was comfortable in the company of the other, and both elephants experienced different, yet obvious, levels of stress,” Breheny further explained.

NhRP could have chosen to fight for the rights of other solitary elephants, but they preferred Happy because she has made valuable contributions to scientific studies about elephant cognition abilities. And so, the organization decided to file for a writ of habeas corpus on Happy’s behalf, making it the foremost animal rights case in US judicial history.

But New York’s highest court did not accept their argument that the writ of habeas corpus could be extended to Happy. Happy is an elephant, not a person.

And, even though NhRP was deeply appreciative of Judge Rowan Wilson’s dissenting opinion, they still felt sad about the ruling. “This is not just a loss for Happy, whose freedom was at stake in this case and who remains imprisoned in a Bronx Zoo exhibit. It’s also a loss for everyone who cares about upholding and strengthening our most cherished values and principles of justice — autonomy, liberty, equality, and fairness — and ensuring our legal system is free of arbitrary reasoning and that no one is denied basic rights simply because of who they are.”

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Source: The Animal Rescue Site Blog