If the elephants in question are granted individual rights, it can be applied to other species.
A case involving two elephants at the Honolulu Zoo could have consequences far beyond the zoo’s gates. On November 9, the Hawaii Supreme Court will consider whether “Mari” and “Vaigai” can invoke habeas corpus, a legal remedy traditionally used to protect human liberty, to challenge their confinement.
The anti-hunting group Nonhuman Rights Project is once again pressing ahead with the claim after two other Hawaii courts already rejected it. The immediate dispute involves elephant captivity. The larger question is whether activists can use the courts to establish animals have legal rights that could eventually be invoked by animal rights activists against animal ownership, zoos, livestock operations and science-based wildlife management, including — and especially — hunting.
During 2023, an animal-rights group sued in Hawaii claiming some animals should count as persons. Lower courts said no. The appeals court agreed in January, basically saying the plain meaning of person doesn’t include animals, and noting the group has lost similar cases before. In July, a Hawaii Supreme Court justice took a sharp swing at the U.S. Supreme Court in a criminal case, writing that the Roberts Court sees only white and ignores who the Equal Protection Clause was meant to protect. He spent several pages of his opinion attacking the high court instead of focusing on the case in front of him.
Also, two years ago Hawaii’s highest court upheld a gun law by invoking the spirit of Aloha. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Alito later pushed back hard, saying the Second Amendment means the same thing in every state—it doesn’t bend for local spirit in Hawaii any more than it does in New York or Chicago. The Court left the Hawaii ruling in place only on a technicality.
The Nonhuman Rights Project wants animals to get basic legal rights. Instead of asking lawmakers for better animal rules, they’re asking judges to treat animals like a new kind of “person” with something close to human rights.
Granting individual rights for two zoo elephants wouldn’t ban hunting on its own. But if courts start giving the same idea to other animals, groups that oppose hunting could use it to fight normal wildlife management decisions. That’s a risk hunters and wildlife agencies can’t ignore.
Rights aren’t based on feeling pain—that’s the argument from groups like NhRP and PETA. They’re based on a being’s ability to think and reason, which is what sets humans apart. Animals primary means of survival is instinctual. They do not have the rational faculties of humans and their cognition involves using reflexes and association via sensory perception.
I’m against cruelty to animals. But the way these groups define cruelty, talk about rights, and file lawsuits isn’t really about protecting animals. It’s about undermining human rights and putting people on the same level as animals in order to eventually treat people like they don’t matter more than anything else.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay
