Back to News
Image Source: (AP Images/Paul Mayall)
February 4, 2025
Nonhuman Rights Project Gets Another Deserved ‘L’ in Court
The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) isn’t tired of all their losing yet and it’s really quite remarkable to watch. They just keep going back for more. Court losses, that is.
The Denver Gazette reported on the latest win for sanity and loss for the Washington, D.C.-based activist animal rights group NhRP after the Colorado Supreme Court rejected the group’s “personhood” lawsuit against the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.
The Colorado Supreme Court dismissed NhRP’s petition for simple reasons. “The group argued habeas rights applied to five female African elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, and sought a court-ordered transfer to an accredited animal sanctuary. But the Supreme Court rejected that argument for a straightforward reason: Colorado’s habeas law applies to ‘persons,’ not animals,” the paper reported.
Once Again for Those in the Back
“Simply put, no Colorado court, nor any other court in any other jurisdiction in the United States has ever recognized the legal ‘personhood’ of any nonhuman species.”
That was the sentiment included in the opinion offered by Colorado Supreme Court Justice Maria Berkenkotter.
“The legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person as that term is used in the habeas corpus statute,” the court stated. “And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”
It’s the same legal opinion that NhRP has been given time and time and time again during their frivolous legal crusade in their attempts to open a pandora’s box of extreme animal rights.
NhRP filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus last year, claiming that five elephants — Missy, Kimba, Lucky, Lou Lou and Jambo — living under the care of zoologists at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs were being held against their will and deserved to be transported to a different sanctuary. The group posited that the elephants were “illegally confined” at the zoo and that the animals “have a right to bodily liberty because they are autonomous and highly intelligent.”
Habeas corpus, of course, is the legal doctrine that states human beings can challenge their detention, if against their own will, and ask a judge to grant their release.
Elephants are not human beings.
Is the Family Pet Next?
NhRP is an extreme animal rights group that has run this losing play several times. The Denver Gazette noted the repetitious legal reach in their reporting, noting, “Berkenkotter added that courts in New York and Connecticut have rejected the Nonhuman Rights Project’s arguments on similar grounds many times before.”
In the New York case, New York’s highest court – the New York Court of Appeals – rejected in 2022 the anti-hunting group’s lawsuit claiming Happy the Elephant wasn’t an animal and instead had “personhood” rights and was being held by the Bronx Zoo against her will.
In that court’s hearing, the New York judges appeared irritated when they heard the case before rendering their decision. Judge Jenny Rivera questioned the NhRP’s attorneys, asking, “If Happy is a person, does that mean that I couldn’t keep a dog? I mean, dogs can memorize words.”
The ridicule was similar this time around as well in Colorado. Some of the Supreme Court justices during oral arguments were wary of the slippery slope that could arise from allowing one type of animal to benefit from habeas relief.
“Half the people in this room have dogs or cats and they’re wondering how this applies, perhaps, to their household,” said Berkenkotter.
Wider Relevance
NhRP isn’t just an extreme animal rights activist group. It’s also bitterly anti-hunting as well and if their statement following the Colorado Supreme Court’s rejection is any indication, the group isn’t going away anytime soon.
“Future courts will reject this notion, as judges in the United States and around the world have already begun to do,” the group wrote in a statement. “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.”
But as noted, the rejection of NhRP’s ridiculous legal threats is critical to hunting and conservation efforts from coast to coast. If the courts ever decided the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo Five, or Happy or any other animal in monitored and beneficial care did indeed possess personhood rights, the floodgate would open for future lawsuits against other zoos or farms. Animal rights groups could sue dairy cow or meat processing operations, pig farms, or chicken or pheasant preserves. The New York Farm Bureau even submitted an amicus brief in favor of the Bronx Zoo case in 2022 warning that a ruling in NhRP’s favor could be disastrous. “Worse, if any of those habeas petitions succeed in securing the release or transfer of livestock… the downstream effects also would be serious.”
All of that would mean severe obstacles to hunters harvesting wild game and the wildlife management biologists that rely on hunting as a wildlife conservation management tool.
NhRP should take this latest loss and go away with these cynical legal gymnastics. The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation demonstrates that when a society puts intrinsic value on wildlife, those species prosper. NhRP’s goal was never to free any of these elephants – as the Colorado justices also made clear in their opinion. NhRP’s goal was to force a radical anti-hunting agenda by judicial precedent that would disenfranchise hunters – the original conservationists.
You may also be interested in:
9th Circuit Judge Highlights Procedural Machinations for Routing 2A Challenges
Categories: BP Item, Conservation, Featured, Top Stories
25650
