Elephants can't pursue their release from a Colorado zoo because they're not human, court says
DENVER — Five elephants at a Colorado zoo may be “majestic” but, since they’re not human, they do not have the legal right to pursue their release, Colorado’s highest court said Tuesday.
DENVER — Five elephants at a Colorado zoo may be “majestic” but, since they’re not human, they do not have the legal right to pursue their release, Colorado’s highest court said Tuesday.
The ruling from the Colorado Supreme Court follows a similar court defeat in New York in 2022 for an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo in a case brought by an animal rights group. Rulings in favor of the animals would have allowed lawyers for both Happy and the elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs — Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo — to pursue a long-held legal process for prisoners to challenge their detention and possibly be sent to live in an elephant sanctuary instead.
The Colorado court said its decision “does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals.”
“Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person,” the court said. “And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim,” it said in the ruling.
The same animal rights group that tried to win Happy’s release, the Nonhuman Rights Project, also brought the case in Colorado.
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