Not kidding! Court officially rules that elephants don’t qualify as ‘persons’
A movement to declare elephants “persons” and give them rights to habeas corpus legal actions has proven to be a step too far even for the leftists on the Colorado Supreme Court, who just months ago had attempted to remove President Donald Trump from the state’s 2024 primary election ballot.
That move was overturned promptly by the U.S. Supreme Court and now it remains to be seen whether the justices’ new position, regarding an organization claiming to represent the best interests of Kimba, Lucky, Missy, LouLou and Jambo, African elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, is upheld.
Courthouse News has reported on the case brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, which demanded that the courts expand the definition of “persons” to include the elephants.
The state’s high court rejected the attempt, concluding that the Colorado habeas statute applies to people and not animals, “no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be.”
Justice Maria Berkenkotter wrote for the court that “because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim,” the report explained.
The NRP had demanded in a habeas petition in 2023 that the elephants be freed from the confines of the zoo and be moved to a “sanctuary.”
After all, the petition argued, they are highly intelligent and autonomous.
The case earlier was dismissed by the El Paso County district court.
The NRP then appealed the state Supreme Court, which now has said the historical importance of habeas is that it’s been important to challenge “various forms of unjust detention,” the report noted.
However, that same history doesn’t apply to animals.
Berkentrotter confirmed Colorado’s habeas law doesn’t define “person,” but it is defined elsewhere in state law to include an individual, corporation, estate, government or other legal entity.
Berkentrotter said if animals are to be included among “persons,” that would be a redefinition for the state’s General Assembly to make explicit.
The opinion noted that no Colorado court, or court anywhere else in the U.S., has determined a “nonhuman species” to qualify for “personhood.”
The NRP said the decision was an injustice, and it will continue fighting the “notion” that it finds in an “entrenched status quo.”