An elephant at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado is shown behind a fence. (screengrab via KCNC-TV)
The highest court in Colorado decided on Tuesday that the five elephants held in a local zoo are not able to request habeas corpus relief because no court in the United States has ever acknowledged the legal status of any nonhuman species as “persons.”
An advocacy group called the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) presented a petition in 2023 aiming to secure legal rights for intelligent animals by advocating for the release of the five elephants from what they describe as unjust confinement. The NRP utilizes habeas corpus petitions as a traditional method to challenge the legality of imprisonment before a court, drawing on its historical use in granting rights to enslaved individuals, transitioning them from objects to legal persons.
The five elephants named Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo are the subjects of the NRP’s petition, which asserts that their current confinement at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs is unlawful and that they should be relocated to a sanctuary. The NRP argues that elephants are intelligent and highly complex creatures with intricate biological, psychological, and social needs that a zoo environment cannot adequately fulfill.
“Elephants are meant to live as self-determinative, autonomous beings in the wild,” it argued. “When forced to live in an unnatural environment, they suffer greatly as a result.”
The zoo countered with a motion to dismiss the petition, arguing that elephants lacked standing because Colorado’s habeas corpus statute does not apply to animals. The zoo also argued that the elephants were not mistreated in its facilities. The El Paso County District Court agreed that the animals lacked standing, as the statute only covered claimants who were people.
NRP appealed and the Colorado Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that there is insufficient historical precedent to support elephants having standing to file a habeas corpus petition. In a 21-page ruling, the court said the habeas corpus statute does not apply to nonhuman animals such as elephants, “no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be.”
Justice Maria Berkenkotter penned the decision for the six-member court and called attention to NRP’s evidence that elephants “share numerous cognitive capacities with humans, including self-awareness, empathy, awareness of death, intentional communication, and the ability to learn and categorize,” as well as elephants’ highly social nature, long-lasting memories, complex communication skills, and propensity to travel in social groups.
However, the judge also discussed the history of Colorado’s habeas corpus statute, which only extended rights to “persons.” Although Colorado law did not define “person,” the court said, there is no precedent to support considering a member of a nonhuman species a “person” for purposes of habeas corpus. Ultimately, the court ruled that “because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.”
More Law&Crime Coverage: ‘We Are Unpersuaded’: Happy the Elephant Isn’t a ‘Person,’ New York’s Highest Court Rules
In the decision, Berkenkotter specifically noted that NRP is not actually seeking freedom from captivity for the elephants. “[I]t was not suggesting that the Zoo should open its gates and set the elephants loose to roam free in Colorado Springs and beyond, any more than it was suggesting that very smart dogs could not be ‘kept’ as house pets,” the judge commented about NRP’s case.
“Instead, it asked to transfer the elephants from the Zoo to a different confinement,” she continued, noting that given the ultimate goal of transferring elephants “from one form of confinement to another is yet another reason that habeas relief is not appropriate here.”
The court ended its decision by commenting that the question before it was narrow and that the protection of nonhuman animals like Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo should be handled by the legislative rather than the judicial branch.
The parties did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
You can read the full decision here.
