Happy is an Asian elephant who has lived since 1977 in captivity at the Bronx Zoo.
In 2018, lawyers for a group known as the Nonhuman Rights Project went to court seeking her release to an elephant sanctuary. They argued that "autonomous and extraordinarily cognitively complex" animals such as elephants and chimpanzees should not be dismissed as dumb beasts that humans may capture, imprison and display at will. Instead they should be treated as "legal persons" entitled to certain fundamental legal rights — including the right to "bodily liberty."
It was a bold argument, but it didn't fly. In mid-June, New York's highest court rejected it, declaring that, no, elephants are not in fact people, and while they deserve to be treated with "proper care and compassion," they don't have legal rights like humans.
