Happy the elephant is not a legal person, New York court rules

The New York state’s Court of Appeals ruled on Tuesday that Happy the Elephant is not a person, ending the years-long legal dispute to give the animal human rights. 

According to the elephant’s legal team, their trunked client is being detained by the Bronx Zoo “illegally,” and her rights as a person establish that she must be released immediately.

“The elephant is being imprisoned against her will,” Steve​n Wise, Happy’s lawyer from the Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) told the Wall Street Journal. “For more than 40 years, she has been kept as a prisoner.”

However, the court ruled in a 5-2 decision that Happy is not a person in a legal sense and is not entitled to fundamental human rights. The decision means that Happy will continue to live in the Bronx Zoo, which has been her home for the past 45 years. 

Happy, a female Asian elephant, was born in the wild in 1971 in Thailand. She was brought to the United States and sold for $800 to the Lion Country Safari, along with six other baby elephants, all named after the dwarves from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, according to the NRP website. In 1977, the six elephants were relocated to circuses and zoos around the nation. Happy and Grumpy were sent to the Bronx Zoo.

In 2005, Happy became the first elephant ever to pass: the mirror self-recognition test, which allegedly shows whether an animal has self-awareness.

Her lawyers claim that by performing this action of self-awareness, the elephant is an intelligent being that should be given rights. If Happy was legal personhood, the team at NRP could move the elephant from the zoo to a spacious sanctuary. 

While the court admitted that Happy was "impressive," it wasn't enough to grant her personhood.

"Because the writ of habeas corpus is intended to protect the liberty right of human beings to be free of unlawful confinement, it has no applicability to Happy, a nonhuman animal who is not a 'person' subjected to illegal detention," the decision said. 

"Thus, while no one disputes that elephants are intelligent beings deserving of proper care and compassion, the courts below properly granted the motion to dismiss the petition for a writ of habeas corpus, and we therefore affirm."

Happy’s trial was the first time that a U.S. court heard oral arguments regarding an elephant’s legal personhood.