News Digest

Monkey business: Court to decide if chimps should get ‘human rights’

A New York court is set to decide whether chimpanzees are entitled to “legal personhood” and the protections that go with it. The case, which experts say is the first of its kind, revolves around Tommy the chimp, who is currently being kept by his owner in a cage in upstate New York. Lawyer Steven Wise represents an animal rights group called the “Nonhuman Rights Project” and has been campaigning for decades to extend human rights to other intelligent animals. Mr Wise is seeking a ruling that 26-year-old Tommy has been unlawfully imprisoned and should be cared for in a Florida sanctuary.

He’s got a lot of enrichment. He’s got colour TV, cable and a stereo … he likes being by himself.

Tommy’s owner, Patrick Laverty

Previous lawsuits have been thrown out, but Mr Wise has appealed against the decision. If the New York state appeals court rules in his favour it could strengthen the case for extended rights for other high intelligence animals such as dolphins and elephants. He is using a legal argument usually deployed by prisoners who feel they have been locked up illegally. Tommy’s owner, Patrick Laverty, said that Tommy actually lives in a state-of-the-art facility and that he has been on a waiting list for an animal sanctuary for some time.

Our mission is to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere ‘things’, which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to ‘persons’.

On the website of animal rights group Nonhuman Rights Project