DENVER — Five elephants at a Colorado zoo do not have the legal right to pursue their own freedom from a Colorado zoo, the state’s highest court ruled 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 the same 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 the same legal process that human prisoners use to challenge their detention, and possibly be sent to live in an elephant sanctuary instead.
“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,” the ruling noted.
Instead, it added, the “legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person as that term is used in the ... statute. And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim,” the court concluded.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, the group that advocated for the animals argued that the Colorado elephants, born in the wild in Africa, have shown signs of brain damage because the zoo is essentially a prison for such intelligent and social creatures, which are known to roam for miles a day. It wanted the animals released to one of the two accredited elephant sanctuaries in the United States because the group doesn’t think they could survive in the wild.
The zoo, however, argued that moving the elephants and potentially placing them with new animals would be cruel at their age, possibly causing unnecessary stress. It said they aren’t used to being in larger herds and, based on the zoo’s observations, the elephants don’t have the skills or desire to join one.
The Nonhuman Rights Project said in a statement that the latest ruling “perpetuates a clear injustice,” and predicted future courts would reject the idea that only humans have a right to liberty.
“As with other social justice movements, early losses are expected as we challenge an entrenched status quo that has allowed Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo to be relegated to a lifetime of mental and physical suffering,” it said.
