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Court to decide if chimpanzees get legal rights Court to decide if chimpanzees get legal rights
(about 7 hours later)
A US court is set to decide if a chimpanzee is entitled to legal rights this week. Tommy, a 26-year-old former circus performer, lives on a caravan park in Gloversville in upstate New York, where he spends his days alone and confined to a shed, watching cartoons and nature programmes on television.
In what experts say is the first case of its kind, lawyers will argue that a chimpanzee called Tommy is being “unlawfully imprisoned” in a shed in upstate New York, and he is entitled to “legal personhood,” meaning the animal would have capable of having legal rights. His lawyer, Steven Wise, says this is no kind of life for a human. The problem? Tommy is a chimpanzee.
Tommy is a 26-year-old chimpanzee living in what Steven Wise, the lawyer behind the case, has described as a “dark, dank shed,” and should be transferred to a chimp sanctuary in Florida. This week, however, in what is believed to be the first court case of its kind, Mr Wise will argue that Tommy and other chimps are entitled to “legal personhood”. The Boston-based lawyer, who is also the president of animal advocacy group the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), hopes a New York appeals court will rule that Tommy has been unlawfully imprisoned, and ought to be released to live among other chimps at a sanctuary in Florida.
The legal mechanism Mr Wise is using in Tommy’s case is usually filed on behalf of people such as prison inmates, who claim they have been unlawfully imprisoned. Keeping Tommy alone in a cage is just like keeping a human in solitary confinement, says Mr Wise, who has spent much of his career attempting to extend human rights and protections – such as freedom from captivity – to other intelligent animals.
Mr Wise is part of The Nonhuman Rights Project, which claims it is the only organisation working toward “actual legal rights for members of species other than our own”. The NhRP purports to be “the only organisation working toward actual legal rights for members of species other than our own.” Its mission, according to its website, is “to change the common law status of at least some non-human animals from mere ‘things,’ which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to ‘persons’.”
He has said that “as a matter of both liberty and equality, Tommy should be seen as a person”. Tommy’s lawsuit has already been lost in lower courts, but Mr Wise is appealing the case, based on a legal mechanism that was historically used on behalf of slaves. “As a matter of both liberty and equality,” Mr Wise has said, “Tommy should be seen as a person.”
Previous lawsuits involving Tommy’s legal rights have not ruled in the chimpanzee’s favour, but Mr Wise is appealing this decision, and said that if the New York State appeals court rules in the animal’s favour it could lead to further cases asking for rights of intelligent animals such as elephants, dolphins, orcas, and other non-human primates. In a 65-page legal brief, the NhRP cites several specialists, such as the British primate expert Jane Goodall, to argue that chimps are “autonomous, self-determined, self-aware, highly intelligent, and emotionally complex beings who suffer from imprisonment.” As such, the animals fit the legal profile of a “person”. “Person is not a synonym for ‘human being’,” the brief explains, “but designates an entity with the capacity for legal rights.”
Mr Wise, who is based in Boston, added: “The next argument could be that Tommy also has the right to bodily integrity, so he couldn’t be used in biomedical research.” Should Tommy win his case, it could lead to broader rights not only for chimps and their fellow primates, but also for other intelligent animals such as elephants, orcas and dolphins. Mr Wise told Reuters, “The next argument could be that Tommy... has the right to bodily integrity, so he couldn’t be used in biomedical research.”
Legal experts including the US Circuit Judge Richard Posner have criticized the quest for legal rights for animals however. Tommy’s owner, Patrick Lavery, has declined to present his case to the appeals court in Albany, but has said previously that the chimp had been on a waiting list for a primate sanctuary for three years, and that his current home was in fact a state-of-the-art $150,000 (£93,400) enclosure. Last year, Mr Lavery told the Albany Times Union that Tommy has “got a lot of enrichment. He’s got colour TV, cable and a stereo... He likes being by himself.”
Tommy’s owner, Patrick Lavery, has waived his right to make an argument before the New York state appeals court, and has not recently commented on the case. In December, Mr Wise will present a similar case to an appeals court in Rochester on behalf of Kiko, a chimp who lives in less-than-salubrious conditions in Niagara Falls.
When the lawsuit was filed last year Mr Lavery claimed that Tommy’s “shed” is a state of the art, $150,000 (£93,400) facility. The NhRP is expecting a decision from the appeals court in a few weeks’ time.
Mr Lavery also claimed at the time that Tommy had been on a waiting list for a primate sanctuary for three years.
Later this year an appeals court in Rochester in the US will hear another case from Mr Wise concerning a chimpanzee called Kiko.
Additional reporting by Reuters