On this day in vegan history · November 3, 2016
A Chimpanzee Wins Habeas Corpus
In Mendoza, Argentina, a judge looked at a chimpanzee alone in a concrete cage and ruled that the law meant to free wrongly held humans applied to her too.
The facts
- Date of ruling
- November 3, 2016
- Court
- Third Court of Guarantees, Mendoza, Argentina, Judge María Alejandra Mauricio
- Petitioner
- AFADA, the Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights
- Outcome
- Zoo ordered to transfer Cecilia within six months; she arrived at the Great Ape Project sanctuary in Sorocaba, Brazil, in April 2017
Cecilia had spent years in a bare enclosure at the Mendoza Zoo, and by 2016 she was alone there; the companions she had lived alongside were gone. The Association of Officials and Lawyers for Animal Rights, known by its Spanish acronym AFADA, filed a writ of habeas corpus on her behalf before the Third Court of Guarantees in Mendoza, a legal tool built for people held unlawfully. On November 3, 2016, Judge María Alejandra Mauricio granted it, ruling that great apes are sentient beings and non-human persons subject to rights rather than property the zoo could simply keep. She gave the zoo six months to arrange Cecilia's transfer to a sanctuary in Brazil. No animal anywhere had been freed by habeas corpus before.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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great apes, including chimpanzees, are sentient beings, and therefore, they are non-human persons subject to rights
Judge María Alejandra Mauricio's November 3, 2016 ruling, Third Court of Guarantees, Mendoza
Source: Animal Legal & Historical Center, Michigan State University College of Law -
a captive chimpanzee named Cecilia at the Mendoza Zoo is a "non-human legal person" with "inherent rights."
The Nonhuman Rights Project, describing Judge Mauricio's November 3, 2016 ruling
Source: Nonhuman Rights Project
Why it still matters
It was the first time a court anywhere used habeas corpus, a protection built for illegally detained humans, to order a nonhuman animal set free. The ruling didn't rewrite the law for every caged animal, but it gave lawyers a real precedent to point to, and it gave one chimpanzee the rest of her life among others of her kind instead of alone.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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