A zoo in the western Upper Peninsula is asking the Michigan Supreme Court to refuse a case that seeks a ruling that chimpanzees have constitutional rights against wrongful imprisonment.
The Washington D.C.-based Nonhuman Rights Project argues that chimpanzees are intelligent, self-aware and genetically close enough to humans to deserve habeas corpus protections. It filed an appeal last month asking the state’s highest court to reverse a Michigan Court of Appeals decision. The Nonhuman Rights Project wants the apes moved from the zoo to a nature preserve more closely resembling chimpanzees’ natural habitat.
The DeYoung Family Zoo in Wallace argued in a response filed Friday that the animal rights group seeks to stretch habeas corpus rights beyond their intended purpose of protecting people from unlawful confinement by the government.
“Under both common law and Michigan law, chimpanzees are animals, not persons, and animals are treated as property,” said the response. “There is no exception for ‘intelligent’ animals, which as the Court of Appeals noted, has no stopping point. Every other court in the United States where NHRP has brought nearly identical lawsuits involving chimpanzees or elephants has reached the same conclusion based on the same rationale as the Court of Appeals in this case.”
The zoo also argued it would not be in the animals’ best interests to move them to a preserve because they have never lived in the wild.
