Animal Rights Awareness Week is a time to reflect on both how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go. This year, those two realities feel especially present to me because they both tell a true story about animal rights today.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Animal Rights Awareness Week is a fitting moment to do exactly that because two opposite things are true about animal rights law right now:
- The legal system still fails to recognize animals as rights-bearing individuals; and
- The legal system is already treating animals like persons in some important ways.
Evidence for the first statement is obvious. Animals lack the substantive legal rights that fully protect their fundamental interests. Consider bodily liberty. Mari and Vaigai are two elephants taken from their families in the wild when they were young. They have spent decades in a zoo enclosure where they rock and sway in the repetitive motions that signal deep psychological distress. No recognized legal right protects the elephants from this harmful captivity.
Courts have so far refused to apply existing common law principles to protect the liberty of animals like Mari and Vaigai. This year, the Hawai’i Intermediate Court of Appeals ruled that the writ of habeas corpus does not reach Mari and Vaigai because elephants are not “persons.” The court did not dispute that the elephants are harmed by captivity.
That refusal is a substantive barrier. Animals also face procedural barriers caused by their rightlessness. Last year, the Colorado Supreme Court held that Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo, lacked standing to seek habeas corpus because they were elephants. Consequently, the Colorado Supreme Court held that courts did not even have the power to decide whether the confinement was lawful.
When animals lack standing, even protections that already exist on paper become impossible to enforce. Because animals lack standing, the government is usually the only one able to enforce anti-cruelty laws. But too often the government refuses to act. This problem causes anti-cruelty and other welfare laws to often fall short of their promise.
Our ongoing case against Ridglan Farms shows how wide this enforcement gap can be. In 2025, a Wisconsin trial judge found probable cause that Ridglan had committed animal cruelty and appointed a special prosecutor. He concluded that at most he could punish past wrongdoing but had no power to protect the dogs from ongoing harm. The result exposed a troubling gap: although the dogs were suffering an illegal injury, they had no meaningful way to seek protection through the justice system.
As a legal measure of last resort, the NhRP filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of the Ridglan beagles. The court dismissed the petition because it was brought on behalf of dogs. It did not even address the question of whether their treatment violated the law.
This picture is dim, but it is only half the story. At the start I named two opposing truths. The same legal system that is falling short for animals is already starting to treat animals like persons.
Just a few years ago, the idea that a state’s highest court would agree to hear arguments on behalf of elephants seeking liberty seemed almost unimaginable. Today, it has happened three times. Last week, the Hawai’i Supreme Court agreed to review Mari and Vaigai’s case, becoming the third state high court in the nation to hear arguments in one of our elephant cases. Whatever the outcome, the decision reflects the growing recognition that the legal questions raised on behalf of animals deserve serious consideration.
Meanwhile, Ridglan announced just this week that it will send all of its remaining dogs to rescue organizations. That result was not achieved in court, but the worldwide advocacy that led to this moment exposes how far the legal system has fallen behind public opinion. A poll of Wisconsin voters captures the magnitude of this gap: 94% agreed that dogs have a right to be free from cruelty, and 86% agreed that courts should act to prevent ongoing suffering when enforcement fails.
Other signs of momentum are accumulating in other areas of the law. More states now weigh the interests of pets in custody disputes, a New York trial judge last year recognized a dog as “immediate family” for the purpose of an emotional distress claim, and more zoos are ending their elephant exhibits. Each development helps build the case for animal rights, much as now-Chief Judge Wilson did in his Happy dissent when he cited shifts in pet custody and other areas of law.
Supporters sometimes ask why we keep going when the losses come so often. The answer is that meaningful change rarely moves in a straight line. Transformative progress is slow, uneven, and marked by many setbacks before a breakthrough. The difference between failure and success for animal rights is persistence. Every challenge to the unjust status quo moves the conversation forward, and today’s incremental wins and dissents are becoming the pathways for future success.
This is the long work of the Nonhuman Rights Project, and Animal Rights Awareness Week is a fine occasion to take stock of it. What Fitzgerald asked of a first-rate intelligence, this moment asks of all of us: to hold two opposed ideas at once and still function. Every court filing, every conversation, every scientific discovery, every supporter who speaks up for animals helps move this work forward. Progress is rarely sudden. More often, it is built piece by piece until one day what once seemed impossible becomes inevitable. That is why we continue. That is why we remain hopeful. And that is why the Nonhuman Rights Project will keep working until animals are recognized as beings with fundamental rights.