Posted October 10, 2014
On
Wednesday, a state appellate court heard cases about whether a chimpanzee can
be considered a “legal person” and sue for freedom, according to a New York
Times article by Jesse McKinley available here.
MSN News also published an article available here,
NPR here,
and TIME here.
The case
concerns Tommy, a 26-year-old chimp, with no job or criminal record
whose forced to live in a small cage.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal rights group in
Florida, lost
its initial bid to have a lower-court judge rule whether the chimp was
unlawfully imprisoned.
“He can
understand the past, he can anticipate the future and he suffers as much in
solitary confinement as a human being,” said Steven Wise, president of Nonhuman
Rights Project.
Wise plans
to take their case to the highest court in New York, the Court of Appeals, if
they are shut down again, according to MSN
News.
"Personhood
is the legal word, but it's not synonymous with human," said Wise.
The
Nonhuman Rights Project details scientific studies in a 65-page
brief to argue that chimpanzees are “autonomous, self-aware, highly
intelligent beings that fit the profile courts have previously used in
recognizing ‘legal persons.’"
Earlier
this year, a preliminary injunction prevented Tommy from being moved outside
the state, according to NPR.
“Our goal
is, very simply, to breach the legal wall that separates all humans from all
nonhuman animals.”
For more information on animal welfare, please visit the
National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
