PETA lawsuit seeks to expand animal rights

[troung]

PETA lawsuit seeks to expand animal rights
APBy DAVID CRARY and JULIE WATSON - Associated Press | AP – 54 mins ago
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PETA lawsuit seeks to expand animal rights - Yahoo! News

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal court is being asked to grant constitutional rights to five killer whales who perform at marine parks — an unprecedented and perhaps quixotic legal action that is nonetheless likely to stoke an ongoing, intense debate at America's law schools over expansion of animal rights.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is accusing the SeaWorld parks of keeping five star-performer whales in conditions that violate the 13th Amendment ban on slavery. SeaWorld depicted the suit as baseless.

The chances of the suit succeeding are slim, according to legal experts not involved in the case; any judge who hews to the original intent of the authors of the amendment is unlikely to find that they wanted to protect animals. But PETA relishes engaging in the court of public opinion, as evidenced by its provocative anti-fur and pro-vegan campaigns.

The suit, which PETA says it will file Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Diego, hinges on the fact that the 13th Amendment, while prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude, does not specify that only humans can be victims.

Jeff Kerr, PETA's general counsel, says his five-member legal team — which spent 18 months preparing the case — believes it's the first federal court suit seeking constitutional rights for members of an animal species.

The plaintiffs are the five orcas, Tilikum and Katina based at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla., and Corky, Kasatka and Ulises at SeaWorld San Diego. Tilikum, a six-ton male, made national news in February 2010 when he grabbed a trainer at the close of a performance and dragged her underwater until she drowned.

Captured nearly 30 years ago off Iceland, Tilikum has enormous value as a stud and has fathered many of the calves born at SeaWorld parks.

The lawsuit asks the court to order the orcas released to the custody of a legal guardian who would find a "suitable habitat" for them.

"By any definition, these orcas are slaves — kidnapped from their homes, kept confined, denied everything that's natural to them and forced to perform tricks for SeaWorld's profit," said Kerr. "The males have their sperm collected, the females are artificially inseminated and forced to bear young which are sometimes shipped away."

SeaWorld, which is owned by private equity firm Blackstone Group LP, said any effort to extend the 13th Amendment's protections beyond humans "is baseless and in many ways offensive."

"SeaWorld is among the world's most respected zoological institutions," the company said. "There is no higher priority than the welfare of the animals entrusted to our care and no facility sets higher standards in husbandry, veterinary care and enrichment."

The statement outlined the many laws and regulations SeaWorld is obliged to follow, touted the company's global efforts to promote conservation of marine mammals, and said the orcas' performances help give the public a better appreciation and understanding of these animals.

SeaWorld and other U.S. marine parks are governed by the Marine Mammals Protection Act, which allows public displays of the creatures if permits are obtained and the facility offers and education/conservation programs for the public.

Overall, under prevailing U.S. legal doctrine, animals under human control are considered property, not entities with legal standing of their own. They are afforded some protections through animal-cruelty laws, endangered-species regulations and the federal Animal Welfare Act, but are not endowed with a distinct set of rights.

However, the field of animal law has evolved steadily, with courses taught at scores of law schools. Many prominent lawyers and academics have joined in serious discussion about expanding animal rights.

Rutgers University law professor Gary Francione, for example, contends that animals deserve the fundamental right to not be treated as property. Law professor David Favre of Michigan State University has proposed a new legal category called "living property" as a step toward providing rights for some animals.

Favre was skeptical that litigation seeking to apply the 13th Amendment to animals would prevail.

"The court will most likely not even get to the merits of the case, and find that the plaintiffs do not have standing to file the lawsuit at all," he said by email. "I also think a court would not be predisposed to open up that box with fully unknown consequences."

Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe, who in past writings has proposed extending legal standing to chimpanzees, also expressed doubt that the courts were ready to apply the 13th Amendment to animals. But he welcomed the PETA lawsuit as a potentially valuable catalyst for "national reflection and deliberation" about humans' treatment of animals.

"People may well look back at this lawsuit and see in it a perceptive glimpse into a future of greater compassion for species other than our own," Tribe wrote in an email.

Tribe noted that some Americans might find it bizarre or insulting to equate any treatment of animals to the sufferings of human slavery. But he argued that the 13th Amendment was written broadly, to address unforeseen circumstances, and could legitimately be applied to animals.

An African-American constitutional expert, Nicholas Johnson of Fordham University School of Law, said he could understand why some blacks might be insulted by the lawsuit, but didn't share that reaction: "I'm more entertained by it in the legal context than I am offended by it."

PETA addressed this issue in the suit, noting that repeated Supreme Court rulings have applied the 13th Amendment to many forms of involuntary servitude beyond the type of slavery that existed during the Civil War.

"The historical context is undeniable," said Jeff Kerr, the PETA lawyer. "But that's not what this case is about. It's about the orcas in their own right, not whether they are or aren't similar to humans."

The five orcas are represented in the case by PETA and four individuals: Ric O'Barry, a longtime orca and dolphin trainer; Ingrid Visser, a New Zealand marine biologist who has studied orcas extensively; Howard Garrett, founder of the Orca Network, an advocacy group in Washington State; and Samantha Berg, a former orca trainer at SeaWorld Orlando.

The lawsuit details the distinctive traits of orcas, the largest species within the dolphin family, including their sophisticated problem-solving and communicative abilities and their formation of complex communities.

The suit alleges that captivity in the "barren tanks" of a marine park suppresses the orcas' abilities and relationships, and subjects them to stress. This sometimes leads to instances where the orcas injure themselves, other orcas or humans that interact with them, according to the suit.

Naomi Rose, the Humane Society's marine mammal biologist, said there's a growing body of research suggesting that whales, dolphins and porpoises have the cognitive sophistication of 3-to-4-year-old human children.

As for the orcas at SeaWorld, she said, "They don't seem to adapt to captivity. I would say they're miserable."

At SeaWorld San Diego, visitors are shown a film touting the park's rescue efforts that have saved thousands of sea creatures. During the main performance, trainers point out how much the orcas are similar to humans: The babies cry before moving on to babbling and finally imitating the crackling sounds of the adults' voices.

Jenny Raymond, 47, who was visiting from Switzerland, said she was delighted by the show and does not buy the argument that the orcas are slave laborers.

"I think they are in better conditions here than in the wild," she said.

___

Crary reported from New York City.

[bigross86]

Bloody idiots...

[Dreadnought]

These people IMO are idiots.

I dont condone ocean going creatures as "property" but atleast they must answer to someone for their conditions. I do agree with that.

BUT, outfits like this are the very same outfits that "selectively" persue Animal Rights.

Michael Vick, case in point. He did his time in prison, paid the fines, lost his job and has done everything they have demanded he do. The mans children cannot even own a dog at last time I checked.

Now if they did that for everyone that treats animals this way then they would have more places to keep the misfortunate animals that have been abused, more fines being paid and more people in jail. It just might catch on and people may be more afraid to abuse them or think twice about the responsibility of even owning one to begin with.

Stop being ambulance chasers of the celebrity type and big money corps and go after the local idiots the very same way they chase the popular. The unpopular people own far more animals then these people do and are far more guilty of animal abuse as it happens every single day unfortunately.

[dave lukins]

You need to read it to believe it. Who's picking up the tab for this?

[Chogy]

These are the same people who are more concerned about captive animals' conditions than the millions of children living in grinding poverty and starvation on a daily basis. Tell them "1,000 children died of starvation today in sub-Saharan Africa" and they'll mouth appropriate sympathies. Tell them Flipper is being abused at a sea world, and they foam at the mouth, and demand immediate action.

People should come first. And don't jam your beliefs down peoples' throats.

[highsea]

Jeez, I don't know if we should give killer whales guns.

They already have really big teeth.

[zraver]

Animals do enjoy some rights, some more than others. Animals like dogs and cats are much higher up the scale than say chickens or mice. Plus the whole idea of rights is somewhat dishonest from the start. I mean if God gives us certain rights like the right to pursue happiness or the right right to life, why do people get abused by others or die senselessly....?

Nor can rights be tied to sentience, It is widely accepted that humans are not the only sentient beings on planet earth. Nor are they tied to more complex functions like the ability to reason since millions of humans who can't reason have rights, but animals that can don't. Rights are not even merely restricted humans but no one else is an arbitrary but at least uniform way. The baby in the womb is as fully human as the mother but has none of her rights- even less than many animals.

The best indicator of who has rights seems to be personhood... Because while not every human has rights in America, every person does even those whose personhood is a legal fiction like a corporation or government. So should animals be given personhood? In some cases it might not be a bad idea for example the male orca that drowned the trainer, or Travis the chimp that ate that woman's face might have been better off if they had rights strong enough to curtail that evidence rage they displayed. But that is the drawback of personhood, for it comes with increasing levels of accountability. But accountability doesn't always come with increasing levels of personhood as millions of dogs that bite find out. They face the ultimate act of accountability but have no level of personhood.

[Gun Grape]

You evil people. Whales have rights.

The right to be tasty

[Doktor]

Every animal has a right to be tasty

[USSWisconsin]

Yes lets give them the vote - let them run of office. These "petas" have ideas about freeing livestock too - open the gates and let them all roam free, lock up their owners instead for false imprisonment.... Feces for brains. They have already gotten laws passed - thanks to them to cost of horses had plummeted - since they now have to be shipped to other countries to put them down... This leads to frequent abandonment and sloppy "back alley" attempts at euthanasia where the animal needless suffers. They have the Humane Society of America too - this is not the animal shelter, this org doesn't have any shelters - it is another lobbying org that wants to do this kind of stuff: make animals citizens, pay them for their services, put them on medicare... Idiots... The typical person involved in supporting this stuff has a cat or a dog and understands very little about livestock. They imagine all animals are "pets" or even "equals".

They would make bacon illegal! I say we conduct NGFS on their sorry hides. After the flogging around the fleet.