By Liz Nass
Gongwer News Service
Seven chimpanzees will stay at the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace after the Court of Appeals ruled that the chimpanzees do not share the habeas corpus rights of a human being.
In the published Nonhuman Rights Project v. DeYoung Family Zoo (COA Docket No. 369247) decision written by Judge Matthew Ackerman and signed by Judge Brock Swartzle and Judge Christopher Trebilcock, the court stood by the dismissal of the case from Menominee County Circuit Court that the work person barred chimpanzees from the transfer from the zoo.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, a nonprofit that works to secure legal rights for animals, wrote a complaint that chimpanzees were not receiving sufficient interaction and year-round outdoor space at the private zoo, calling for the relocation to a chimpanzee sanctuary.
The court called this “a novel request for a centuries-old remedy,” which is usually prescribed as a remedy to false imprisonment.
Although the court said it agreed with the nonprofit that “[t]he word ‘person’ may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate, as well as to individuals,” the “person” must have “a cognizable interest in personal liberty.”
It also defined that in common law, “persons” was confined to human beings and separately addressed animals.
“They are not ‘persons’ possessing the ‘personal liberty’ interest that habeas vindicates,” Ackerman wrote. “They are not analogous to slaves or women — both categories comprised human beings recognized as ‘persons’ in our legal tradition. Rather, the chimpanzees are animals, and as the common law authorities all make clear, animals — including wild animals, such as these chimpanzees — are treated as property. No exception exists for “intelligent” animals, which in any event has no natural stopping point.”
The court concluded that only the Supreme Court could change this common law principle and the “plaintiff’s argument for doing so is in any event substantively unpersuasive.”
Gongwer News Service
Seven chimpanzees will stay at the DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace after the Court of Appeals ruled that the chimpanzees do not share the habeas corpus rights of a human being.
In the published Nonhuman Rights Project v. DeYoung Family Zoo (COA Docket No. 369247) decision written by Judge Matthew Ackerman and signed by Judge Brock Swartzle and Judge Christopher Trebilcock, the court stood by the dismissal of the case from Menominee County Circuit Court that the work person barred chimpanzees from the transfer from the zoo.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, a nonprofit that works to secure legal rights for animals, wrote a complaint that chimpanzees were not receiving sufficient interaction and year-round outdoor space at the private zoo, calling for the relocation to a chimpanzee sanctuary.
The court called this “a novel request for a centuries-old remedy,” which is usually prescribed as a remedy to false imprisonment.
Although the court said it agreed with the nonprofit that “[t]he word ‘person’ may extend and be applied to bodies politic and corporate, as well as to individuals,” the “person” must have “a cognizable interest in personal liberty.”
It also defined that in common law, “persons” was confined to human beings and separately addressed animals.
“They are not ‘persons’ possessing the ‘personal liberty’ interest that habeas vindicates,” Ackerman wrote. “They are not analogous to slaves or women — both categories comprised human beings recognized as ‘persons’ in our legal tradition. Rather, the chimpanzees are animals, and as the common law authorities all make clear, animals — including wild animals, such as these chimpanzees — are treated as property. No exception exists for “intelligent” animals, which in any event has no natural stopping point.”
The court concluded that only the Supreme Court could change this common law principle and the “plaintiff’s argument for doing so is in any event substantively unpersuasive.”
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