In late 2021, The Brooks McCormick Jr. Animal Law & Policy Program at Harvard Law School and the Nonhuman Rights Project jointly filed an amicus curiae brief with the Constitutional Court of Ecuador, urging it to recognize that nonhuman animals can have legal rights. In a milestone decision, the Court has done so.
As India Bourke writes for The New Statesman, “Ecuador is now the second jurisdiction in the world where a high court has declared that at least some animals have ‘real legal rights’ (the first being India’s Supreme Court in 2014).”
Soon the NhRP will send a letter to the New York Court of Appeals to inform them of the decision and encourage them to take it into consideration in our elephant client Happy‘s case.
Read the full story here. Read an English translation of the decision here. Read the decision in its original Spanish here.
For a detailed timeline of Happy’s case, court filings, and decisions, visit this page. Find all the latest on the fight for Happy’s freedom and ways to take action on our new Free Happy campaign page.