Can an elephant sue to leave a zoo? Colorado’s top court must now decide

Colorado zoo elephants may soon sue for freedom, sparking debate on animal rights and legal personhood.

Five elephants in a Colorado zoo could someday sue for their freedom, if the state’s Supreme Court sides with an animal rights group and declares them “persons” under the law. But first, the justices had a few questions about cats and dogs.

“How do I know when it stops?” Justice Melissa Hart said during Thursday’s (October 24, 2024) hearing, wondering whether this ruling might someday lead to emancipating people's pets. At stake is whether the elephants from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo should be treated as people under the law. It was a question asked several times but never really answered.

The NonHuman Rights Project says the elephants — Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo — should be able to use a long-held process that's mainly for prisoners to dispute their detention. The group says the animals, born in the wild in Africa, are showing signs of brain damage because the zoo is essentially a prison for such intelligent and social creatures, known to roam for miles a day. They want the animals released to one of the two accredited elephant sanctuaries in the United States because the group doesn't think they can live the wild anymore.

The group unsuccessfully sued in 2022 on behalf of an elephant at the Bronx Zoo named Happy. The highest court in New York ruled that Happy, while intelligent and deserving of compassion, cannot be considered a person who is illegally confined with the ability to pursue a petition seeking release.

The New York ruling said giving such rights to an elephant “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society.”

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo says moving the elephants and potentially placing them with new animals would be cruel at their age, possibly causing unnecessary stress. It says they aren't used to being in larger herds and, based on its experience, they don't have the skills or desire to join one.

The justices will issue a ruling in the coming weeks or months.