A legal attempt to free five elephants from a zoo in the United States failed because judges decided that habeas corpus laws only apply to people, not animals, according to AFP.
Animal rights group the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) wanted to move the elephants—Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo—from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado to an elephant sanctuary.
But on Tuesday, Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled that the state’s habeas corpus laws protect only humans. The judges said, “Colorado’s habeas statute applies only to persons, not nonhuman animals, even if they are highly intelligent, emotional, or social.”
The court made it clear that the issue wasn’t about how the elephants are treated, but whether the law could see an elephant as a “person.”
The judges explained, “The legal issue is whether an elephant is a person… and since an elephant is not a person, the elephants in this case can’t file a habeas corpus claim.”
NRP had also lost a similar case trying to free an elephant named Happy from a New York zoo, where the court ruled that animals don’t qualify for habeas corpus rights. Habeas corpus is a law that comes from the Magna Carta and protects people from being locked up without reason.