An Asian elephant named Happy, who has been at the Bronx Zoo for more than 40 years, will remain there after New York’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that she is not a legal person and therefore has no basic human rights. right.
By a vote of 5 to 2, the Court of Appeal rejected the argument of the animal protection organization that Happy was illegally detained at the zoo and should be moved to a more natural environment.
The dispute depended on whether the ultimate legal principle of habeas corpus – which people claim to protect their physical freedom and challenge illegal detention – should be extended to autonomous, cognitively complex animals such as elephants. No, the court said.
“Although no one disputes the elephants’ impressive abilities, we reject the petitioner’s argument that he has the right to seek legal protection for the habeas corpus on behalf of Happy,” wrote Janet DiFiore, the chief judge. “Habeas corpus is a procedural tool designed to guarantee the rights of freedoms of people who have been illegally detained and not of non-human animals.
But in a special opinion, Judge Rowan D. Wilson said the court was obliged to “recognize Happy’s right to ask for her freedom not only because she is a wild animal that is not meant to be caged and displayed, but because the rights we provide to others, we define who we are as a society. “
The case seems to have been the first to examine whether an animal is worthy of the so-called personality to reach such a high court in the English-speaking world. And while the result remains happy where it is, the split decision is unlikely to quell the debate over whether highly intelligent animals should be seen as anything other than property or property.
The lawsuit was filed as part of a campaign by the Nonhuman Rights Group, an animal advocacy organization involved in long-term legal pressure to release captive animals. Last month, even as Happy’s fate hung in the balance, the group said it wanted three elephants removed from a zoo in Fresno, California.
In New York, the group tried to get Happy to move from the Bronx Zoo, which she said was a prison for her, to one of two huge elephant shelters, which she described as more natural conditions that would make Happy’s life more happy.
“She’s a depressed, fucking elephant,” said Stephen Wise, the group’s founder, in an interview before the decision was announced.
On the other side of the case was the Society for the Conservation of Wildlife, which runs the zoo and categorically rejected the group’s claims about Happy’s existence in the Bronx. She is “well cared for by professionals with decades of experience and with whom she is strongly committed,” a public statement said, adding that the case was “outright exploitation”.
The subject of the dispute was visible on a cool, clear May day by a monorail trolley rolling through the Wild Asia section of the zoo. She and another Asian elephant, Patti, moved slowly, separated by a fence in a tree-lined approximately two acres they shared, with scattered logs and a pool nearby.
“Both of our elephants look great,” said the guide, offering an assessment that may be difficult for the average person to refute. Happy wandered through his grassy stretch in the direction of Patty, his ears, trunk, and tail waving in the morning sun. “They get a lot of attention.”
Elephants are extremely social in nature, roaming in herds and communicating with each other in everything from low-frequency rumbles to the slight tilting of their bodies. They were observed in various mourning behaviors when one of them died.
Happy does not live much of this natural life. Born in the early 1970s, probably in Thailand, she was captured at an early age and taken to the United States, where she ended up at a Florida zoo with six other elephants, each named after Snow White and the Seven characters. dwarves. ” .
The Bronx Zoo acquired her and another of the seven, Grumpy, also a woman, in 1977. The two originally lived with an older female elephant, Tus, at the Elephant House (not in the Wild Asia section where Happy is now raised).
Tuss, Happy, and Grumpy were trained to do tricks, drive children, and perform at Elephant Weekends, dressed in costumes made by a keen artist downtown and “playing” tug of war with firefighters and college football players. (Elephants usually win.)
They were eventually relocated to the Wilder Asia as zoos across the country remodeled or abandoned their elephant shows, in part in response to the growing animal rights movement. Tus died in 2002. A few months later, Patty and Maxine’s second elephant attacked Grumpy, fatally wounding her. The happy ones could no longer be detained with them.
In 2006, a young elephant, Sammy, was brought in as Happy’s new companion, but she died shortly after her arrival. The zoo decided not to add more elephants, instead focusing on helping endangered species in the wild.
That left Happy alone on one side of the fence, with Patty – and, until she died a few years ago, Maxine – on the other. Despite the barrier, zoo officials say Happy is not isolated and that she and Patty touch the trunks, smell and communicate.
This did not stop Happy from becoming a cause for animal rights célèbre. Her journey through New York courts began in 2018 after the Court of Appeals rejected a habeas appeal by Mr. Wise’s group on behalf of two chimpanzees.
Eugene M. Fey, a court judge at the time, joined his colleagues in dismissing the chimpanzee case. But in the same opinion, he said the issue was “a deep dilemma of ethics and policy that requires our attention.”
“The question of whether an inhuman animal has a fundamental right to freedom, protected by the order of the habeas corpus, is deep and far-reaching,” he wrote. “It simply came to our notice then. In the end, we will not be able to ignore it. “
For Mr. Wise, Judge Faye’s opinion offers a glimmer of hope. With exhausted appeals in the case of the chimpanzee, he turned to Happy, who had distinguished herself as particularly advanced in cognitive development, even for a species known for intelligence.
In 2005, she passed a mirror self-recognition test by touching an X marked on her head with her trunk while looking in a mirror – the first elephant to show such a level of self-awareness (only humans, monkeys and dolphins have done so before).
The Inhuman Rights Project filed a habeas petition on behalf of Happy, and in February 2020, a judge at first instance rejected it. The judge, Judge Alison Tweet of the Bronx Supreme Court, said she was bound by legal precedent and reached her conclusion “unfortunately”.
“This court agrees that Happy is more than legal or property,” she wrote. “She is an intelligent, autonomous being who must be treated with respect and dignity and who may have the right to freedom.
The Court of Appeals upheld the lower court’s decision, setting the stage for a hearing last month before the Court of Appeals by seven judges.
Judges asked lawyers on both sides about how autonomy is determined for members of the animal kingdom; the importance of bodily freedom in this case; and the potentially greater consequences of a decision that will move Happy from her current home.
Examining Monica Miller, the lawyer representing the inhuman rights project, Judge Jenny Rivera focused on the implications for pet owners.
“Does that mean I can’t keep a dog?” she asked. “I mean, dogs can memorize words.”
No, Ms. Miller replied, the group’s arguments do not apply to dogs: “At the moment, we have no evidence of dogs that we have for elephants.”
Asked if the group was looking for a solution that only applies to Happy, Ms Miller said: “It would be dishonest not to think that this will be a precedent for another elephant.”
The main argument of the conservation society was that Happy was not detained illegally, but his lawyer Kenneth Manning also raised the specter that people would lose control of animals of all kinds if the court ruled in favor of Mr. Wise’s group. .
“I would not call this excitement, Your Honor,” he told Judge Rivera.
Judge Feihi withdrew from the court last year and was not part of the debate. But he voted for the court to take the case before withdrawing, and in an interview before the ruling was announced, he said it was an important step, regardless of the outcome.
“The real question is whether they are creatures with a complex sense of self,” he said of elephants and other highly intelligent animals such as chimpanzees. There was, he said, “a huge amount of evidence” to support this argument and “no evidence” to contradict it.
He noted that while the dictionary could define “person” in one way, the meaning of the word under the law has changed over time. He noted that corporations are now treated as people in certain situations.
Judge Feihi, who declined to say in an interview how he would vote in the Happy case, also said that advances in technology – those involving artificial intelligence, for example – have made personality issues even more critical.
“The nature of humanity and the nature of intelligence will change with the change of science,” he said. “And if we don’t face the way we define these things now, we won’t have anything to build on when these changes come.”
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