Do you ever wonder what an animal would say if it could talk?
The other night, one of my cats was perched in a basket atop the fridge as I was dicing vegetables. He just kept staring at me with a quizzical expression, like he was wondering why it takes so long to peel and cut beets. I know he wanted to say, “Hurry up so we can play tinsel stick.”
Then he rested his head on a box of cereal and dozed off.
Why am I telling you this? Because I couldn’t think of a better way to ease into a column about pachyderms and the law. On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court made an interesting ruling: five elephants have no legal basis to sue for release from a zoo because they are not people.
The non-profit organization Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed the habeas corpus appeal on behalf of their tusked clients: Kimba, Missy, LouLou, Jambo and Lucky.
Those sound like names of future Kardashian grandchildren. But the legal motion proved unlucky when the court ruled the habeas statute “only applies to persons, and not to non-human animals, no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be.”
The court also qualified the 6-0 decision: “It bears noting that the narrow legal question before this court does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals generally or these five elephants specifically.”
And that’s, well, the elephant in the room.
The animal rights group argued all elephants need ample roaming ground as they would in the wild. If deprived of exercise, a stimulating environment and socialization, elephants can “suffer from chronic frustration, boredom and stress, resulting over time in physical disabilities, psychological disorders, and, often, brain damage.”
So just like we humans feel while waiting in line at Service Ontario.
In turn, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo dismissed the lawsuit as “frivolous” and said in a statement: “While we’re happy with this outcome, we are disappointed that it ever came to this. For the past 19 months, we’ve been subjected to (NhRP’s) misrepresented attacks, and we’ve wasted valuable time and money responding to them in courts and in the court of public opinion.”
If only those elephants could take the stand. They might say, “We love it here.” Or they might say, “We want to hike through a wooded savannah, not pose for selfies with third graders. Yes, please take us to a sanctuary this weekend.”
Since the ruling comes from the state’s highest court, it seems NhRP is out of legal remedies unless Donald Trump issues another executive order this week. Then again, that may backfire if he demands the elephants wear giant MAGA hats and get relocated to Liz Cheney’s backyard where, by presidential fiat, they will be fed by Mark Milley with dung duty falling to Michael Cohen.
I plan to take a gratuitous shot at Trump in every dispatch until 2028.
If human courts understandably do not give standing to non-humans, why don’t we have an Animal Court? Teach a gorilla sign language and make him the judge. Train a kangaroo to be the bailiff. Get bonobos to serve as officers if they promise not to hoot and point when a suited-up chimp appears before Judge Lucy to argue for the right to vote.
The rulings would be more legally sound than Aileen Cannon’s courtroom.
We can all agree animals are not people, even if some people act like animals. This is especially true at Costco on a Saturday when a poor staffer starts putting out tiny cups of macaroni salad and suddenly it’s like a herd of rhinos stampeding toward the free sample kiosk.
By always categorizing animals as property, are we not dehumanizing them? Are we not restricting their rights as living creatures and joint custodians of Planet Earth? I’m not suggesting we issue driver’s licences to raccoons or let a marauding coyote sue a grocery store for wrongful detainment.
I’m not calling for a return of the bizarre and often cruel animal trials of the 13th century where a goat would be led into an ecclesiastic court in France to face serious charges of vandalism or robbery. You can’t execute that goat! That goat didn’t know it was grazing on private property!
All I’m saying is if human experts can make a compelling case about why this specific animal should be liberated from that specific zoo, shouldn’t there be a legal framework to proceed? It’s a morally and philosophically complex subject. So here I will just recommend “The Good Whale” podcast, a deep dive into the real life story of Keiko, the now deceased orca who starred in “Free Willy.”
Courts can’t pretend animals are humans. Fine. That is legally obvious.
But it’s no reason for humans to pretend we do enough for animals.
