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Hardly anyone sees the chimpanzees confined in the DeYoung Family Zoo.
The key to unlocking their cages? Persuading the courts to see these autonomous beings not as the DeYoung Family Zoo’s property, but as legal persons with the fundamental right to liberty.
That’s why today we filed an Application for Leave to Appeal, asking the Michigan Supreme Court to allow the chimpanzees’ case to move forward.
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In October, the Michigan Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s 2023 ruling in the case, which denied the chimpanzees a hearing on the lawfulness of their imprisonment because they’re not human. The Court of Appeals upheld this ruling because the judges considered themselves bound by 19th-century Michigan Supreme Court precedent that treats animals as mere property.
However, as the NhRP argues in our Application, the Court of Appeals misinterpreted those decisions, which have no relevance to whether chimpanzees can be considered legal persons with the right to liberty under Michigan common law. The common law is meant to evolve over time, especially when archaic rules originating in the ancient past result in injustice.
Read our Application here [[link removed]] , and if you can, please donate to the NhRP this Giving Tuesday to help bring the light of the law into the darkness of the DeYoung chimpanzees’ confinement [[link removed]] . Today and tomorrow, all donations to the NhRP are being matched up to $25,000 thanks to a generous donor. To everyone who’s already donated: thank you.
Whether you can donate right now or not, thank you for all you do to help challenge outdated legal frameworks that keep nonhuman animals caged and chained. With the continued determination and moral clarity of people like you who know how wrong it is to treat animals like “things,” the courts will, in time, see it too.
Lauren Choplin
Communications Director, the NhRP
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The NhRP is a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation (Tax ID #: 04-3289466). It is solely through your donations that we can continue to work for the recognition and protection of fundamental rights for nonhuman animals.
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The Nonhuman Rights Project
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