The State of New York Court of Appeals Tuesday ruled that Happy the elephant is not a “person” subject to illegal detention and thus cannot invoke habeas corpus. In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project filed a petition for a common law writ of habeas corpus in order to transfer Happy from the Bronx Zoo to an elephant sanctuary.

A writ of habeas corpus provides individuals “a means to secure release from illegal custody.” The court’s 5-2 ruling stated that Happy does not qualify for habeas corpus, despite her complex cognitive abilities. The court believes that allowing Happy to invoke habeas corpus “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society.” Further, the court stated its role is not to make that determination.

The dissenting justices argued that historically “[e]ven when those classes of human beings have, by operation of law, been denied legal recognition of their humanity, the writ of habeas corpus was still available to them.”

The Nonhuman Rights Project called the dissents “a tremendous victory in a national and global struggle for nonhuman animal rights which we’ve only just begun.”