Dear John,

Last month, two judges on New York’s highest court, Judge Rowan D. Wilson and Judge Jenny Rivera, wrote courageous dissents in our elephant client Happy’s case that link “our country’s tortured history of oppression and subjugation” of humans based on immutable characteristics such as race, gender, culture, national origin, and citizenship to the suffering and rightlessness of nonhuman animals. In so doing, Judge Wilson and Judge Rivera have not only challenged an unjust legal status quo that has existed for centuries; they’re also helping to light the way to a more just future for members of other species—just as courageous dissents by judges have done for humans throughout US legal history.⁣
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For the last several weeks, the NhRP legal team has been analyzing every line in the decision and the dissents in Happy’s case to determine not only how best to confront the majority’s terrible reasoning, including its view of legal personhood as requiring both rights and duties when applied to nonhuman animals, but also how best to use the dissents going forward, particularly their rightfully harsh criticisms of the majority decision. Visit our blog to read NhRP Staff Attorney Jake Davis’s detailed summary of the dissents and learn more about why dissents are so important.

In sharp contrast, the majority of the court declined to do what morality and the law demand and recognize Happy’s right to liberty. It’s now almost certain that a more just future for Happy will come about only if the Bronx Zoo, as a result of public pressure, chooses do to the right thing—release Happy and Patty to sanctuaries and close its elephant exhibit for good, as it once pledged to do. You can help right now by continuing to spread the word and taking action via freehappynow.com.⁣
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Stay tuned for announcements about our next steps, including in our ongoing grassroots campaign to #FreeHappy, and further analysis of the majority decision. 

In other NhRP news:

• This summer the Commerford Zoo—a traveling circus based in Goshen, Connecticut that continues to imprison Minnie the elephant alone on their tiny farm—resumed exhibiting at fairs across the northeastern United States. We’ve been closely monitoring the zoo at each venue, keeping an eye out for Minnie (who hasn’t been seen in public for over three years) and any possible violations of federal and state laws. We know Minnie is still alive and imprisoned at the Commerford Zoo because the USDA recently inspected their property and noted her presence. 
  
  You can help Minnie by sending an email to these fairs, asking them not to allow the Commerford Zoo to exhibit animals at their event. Speaking out to the fairs, which in turn puts pressure on the Commerford Zoo to do the right thing and release Minnie, is an important way you can continue to advocate for Minnie since the court system as well as local, state, and federal government entities have failed to protect and free her. For a sample email and contact info for the fairs, see this blog post by NhRP Director of Government Relations and Campaigns Courtney Fern.
   
• On Monday, we have a hearing in our case to #FreeTheFresnoElephants, whose life stories are a sad reminder of how US zoos continue to import elephants, misleading the public into thinking captivity in zoos is for the elephants’ own good. We’ll argue the case should remain in San Francisco; the Fresno Chaffee Zoo will argue the case should be transferred to Fresno. We hope you’re as excited as we are that their case, and our nonhuman rights work on the West Coast, are now underway. Visit freethefresnoelephants.com to learn more about Amahle, Nowalzi, and Vusmusi and how you can help, and RSVP here for our new Interview Series with experts involved in their case. 
   
• “So much of our connection to animals starts, and ends, with us: We admire elephants, so we put Happy in a zoo; we pollute an animal’s environment, so we have to save them; we are curious about how they compare to humans, so we study them; we want to eat them, so we farm them, even while we claim to love them.” In a moving essay in The Globe and Mail, Erin Anderssen⁣ reflects on how we humans, “languishing so pridefully on our animal kingdom throne,” view and treat other animals, with a focus on the octopus. It’s one of many recent pieces that incorporate Happy’s case, and the above-mentioned dissents, into arguments that we must radically change our relationship to members of other species and that we fail to do so at our own peril. Read Anderssen’s essay here. 

Thank you for being here and for being a voice for our clients, John! 

Lauren Choplin
Communications Director, the NhRP