{"id":759679,"date":"2020-02-20T08:35:14","date_gmt":"2020-02-20T13:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=759679"},"modified":"2020-02-20T08:50:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T13:50:00","slug":"new-york-bronx-supreme-court-justice-breaks-ground-for-elephants-right-to-liberty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/?p=759679","title":{"rendered":"New York-Bronx Supreme Court Justice Breaks Ground for Elephant\u2019s Right to Liberty"},"content":{"rendered":"\t<blockquote  class=\"bs-quote bs-quote-1 bsq-t1 bsq-s1 bsq-left\">\n\t\t<div class=\"quote-content\">\n\t\t\t<p>Justice Tuitt agreed that Happy the elephant is not merely a 'thing', but an 'intelligent, autonomous being who should be treated with respect and dignity, and who may be entitled to liberty.'<\/p>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/blockquote>\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>LAUREN CHOPLIN (NHRP):<\/strong> <em>&#8216;Justice Alison Y. Tuitt of the Bronx Supreme Court today issued a decision in the Nonhuman Rights Project\u2019s New York elephant rights case that is powerfully supportive of our legal arguments to free Happy from the Bronx Zoo to a sanctuary&#8230; In her analysis and conclusion, Justice Tuitt agreed with New York Court of Appeals Justice Eugene M. Fahey\u2019s conclusion that an elephant, like a chimpanzee, is not merely a \u201cthing.\u201d Instead, Happy \u201cis an intelligent, autonomous being who should be treated with respect and dignity, and who may be entitled to liberty.\u201d Further, Justice Tuitt rejected the Bronx Zoo\u2019s claim that its continued imprisonment of Happy is good for her, stating that \u201cthe arguments advanced by the NhRP are extremely persuasive for transferring Happy from her solitary, lonely one-acre exhibit at the Bronx Zoo\u201d to The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>While Justice Tuitt \u201cregretfully\u201d denied the habeas corpus relief the NhRP had demanded because she felt bound by prior appellate court decisions in the NhRP\u2019s chimpanzee rights cases, she essentially vindicated the legal arguments and factual claims about the nature of nonhuman animals such as Happy that the NhRP has been making during the first six years of our rights litigation&#8230; Deeply encouraged by Justice Tuitt\u2019s embrace of the merits of the NhRP\u2019s case following 13 hours of oral argument over three days, we already begun working on our appeal&#8230; While we lament Happy\u2019s continued imprisonment, we thank Justice Tuitt for breaking ground on the long road to securing liberty and justice for Happy and other autonomous nonhuman animals. Happy\u2019s freedom matters as much to her as ours does to us, and we won\u2019t stop fighting in and out of court until she has it&#8217;.<\/em> SOURCE&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>RELATED VIDEO:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Zjo3RVb26qA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LAUREN CHOPLIN (NHRP): &#8216;Justice Alison Y. Tuitt of the Bronx Supreme Court today issued a decision in the Nonhuman Rights Project\u2019s New York elephant rights case that is powerfully supportive of our legal arguments to free Happy from the Bronx Zoo to a sanctuary&#8230; In her analysis and conclusion, Justice Tuitt agreed with New York [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":759680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[16,18,20,21,23,25],"tags":[27,28,30,34,35,37],"class_list":["post-759679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-ethics","category-justice","category-kisnship","category-rights","category-welfare","tag-cruelty","tag-entertainment","tag-exploitation","tag-personhood","tag-protection","tag-speciesism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759679"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":759684,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759679\/revisions\/759684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/759680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/animalrightswatch.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}