Animals in Courts, with The Nonhuman Rights Project

In the 13th episode of the Principles of Change podcast, I discuss the legal system and how it may protect the rights of nonhuman animals with attorney Monica Miller from the Nonhuman Rights Project, who recently took an elephant's case to court with the hopes of freeing her from the Bronx Zoo.

In Today's Episode:

• Intro
• Legal change as an tactic for animal rights
• Animal law in universities
• The role of science
• Happy's story
• Animal rights in courts
• How can you help?
• Monica's principles of change
  
  

Links:
http://nonhumanrights.org

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Transcript

Intro

0:00

Hi, everyone. My name is Alex. I'm the founder of the middle east speaking society. And I give lectures on animal rights and ethics. Thank you for joining another episode of principles of change. Today's guest is Monica Miller from the non-human rights project. Monica Miller. There is an attorney and works for the organization called on human rights project, which focuses on the legal side of animal rights. this was recorded a few months ago. I was quite busy, but I'm so happy to be able to finally share it with you. We're going to be talking about a specific case. often the elephant who is kept in a zoo. That they brought up. And they were able to take to court And see how the current legal system. Works. When it comes to the rights of non-human animals. Monica's work and the work of non-human rights project is so important and I find it so amazing That there are dedicated individuals for spending their time doing this. And I hope that you will learn as much as I learned today and eventually maybe get inspired to get active in this way as well. Thank you again for joining. I'll see you on the other side. Monica, thank you so much for making time for this podcast. I really appreciate it. I can imagine how busy you are usually doing this. My pleasure. Pleasure. I've been great. I mean, you know, times have been a little bit funny these days, but, um, you know, we're making progress in the animal rights world, so that makes me happy. Yeah, I actually read about, uh, Happy's case recently and that's one of the main things that pushed me to have here because I've never had anyone, uh, doing this kind of activism on the podcast. And the whole idea is to make people realize that there's so many different ways of raising awareness about animal rights. So we are gonna get to Happy's case later on. I wanted to ask you, why do you think legal change is something that you chose, or why do you think it's important to use legal change in the. Fight for animal rights. It's really one of, you know, maybe not one of the only avenues cuz there are a lot of avenues. But when I was actually a young child, I always knew I wanted to help animals in some way. And I watched a show called Animal Cops where they had a woman in a police officer outfit, you know, applying the law. But, To animals, and back then it was just welfare laws, but I knew I wasn't gonna be the person that goes door to door or, you know, tying myself to a tree. Um, I went to a, a college, a liberal arts college where there was a lot of, my classmates were the folks that did like Greenpeace and uh, or Peace Corps, like, and, and. Protested and chained themselves. And I loved all that activism, but I just knew I am like an in the, I'm like an indoor cat, um, so to speak. But I actually love the outdoors too. But I, I really, um, felt like my niche would be in advocacy through, you know, like my voice and, and my writing. Um, and so I went to law school to practice animal law, but there wasn't any animal law at the time. There was like two law schools in the country that had even like, One animal law class. So it was hard to even kind of envision what this would look like. But, um, yeah, I mean, it, it, to me it's, it's, it's the difference between, you know, if you have a right or not. Um, you know, activism can only, you know, free some. Not to say only, but it, it'll, it has its limitations. You free the, the bunnies in that one farm, or you free this cow, or you educate this person. But at the end of the day, the law hasn't changed and, and the law might catch up with society. And we, we need everything to happen in tandem for, for the law to catch up with society. But, um, you have to have the laws changed in order to have a right. And currently the animals in our country have no legal rights, no substantive legal rights. Yeah, I understand. Uh, am I right to assume that the, when you go to study law in, uh, animal law and universities, am I right to assume that it's actually always related to welfare? So they're correct. Even there, they're just commodities. Yeah. Insofar as like at law school, you're studying what's existing in the law. So I went to law school, um, exactly 10 years ago, or I graduated 10 years ago, so 13 years I started, I. And, and like I said, Vermont Law School and Lewis and Clark were the two law schools that had any program, but most of the, most of the time those were connected with environmental law. And my background's actually in environmental science and policy. I got my master's degree from Columbia and Environmental Science and Policy. So I'm like, You know, there's a lot of wealth animal like protection, um, you know, protecting the intrinsic value of something that's non-human. It so it makes sense that environmentalism. But there's a lot of times, and I did a lot of my work on the intersectionality and, and the conflict between environmental rights and environmentalism and animal rights, cuz they do conflict, um, when we talk about endangered species. Yes. Or some, some other sort of interventions like, do you save the elephant that's drowning in them? You know, a mud pool or do you say hands off? We're environmentalists. So anyway, all this is to say that nowadays I would say that the animal law, what you would take in school would be different because our cases actually in the last 10 years, cause we filed our first. Animal law, animal rights, chimpanzee case in 2013. Mm-hmm. I've heard from my friends now that are teaching animal law, which is a cool full circle, um, that our cases are in their textbooks now. Wow. So they are gonna learn about personhood. They're just, the law isn't there yet. But we are, we, our group has really created the discussion or has helped center the discussion on rights versus welfare. And it's not to say welfare is, We need, we need welfare laws. I mean, we have to, in so far as humans are going to own and use animals for human ends, then we absolutely need welfare. But like, let's be clear, welfare laws exist to keep animals. In the situation that they're in, which is not as, you know, recognizing their intrinsic worth and dignity as an individual animal, that we wouldn't need those kind of, you know, the cage has to be 40 inches wide. Yeah. Well, you know, there shouldn't be a cage, but if we have the cage, we need the welfare loss. So that's kind of what, where that's at. We're the ones saying, you know, unlock the cage and free, free the animal through the law. That's great. And you mentioned the word personhood. Uh, do you mind defining what it is and why is it important? Yes, absolutely. It's really the crux of what we do, but I think it's also at the same time, a little bit of a misnomer for two reasons. One is that when you hear person, we often think human, like you know, that person over there, that person over there. But legally speaking, a legal person can be anything. Anything that the law says that has a right. That confers what we call legal personhood on that thing. So a ship, for instance, like a boat has had, the US Supreme Court or some state courts have recognized that to be a legal person, like a. Over a hundred years ago. Um, corporations are more commonly, you know, yes. Today we we're familiar with corporate personhood. Um, but, you know, you could give it to, um, really any entity that has a right. And so the, the focus has been, or like the way the news kind of spins our cases is, you know, animal rights group is seeking. Personhood rights. But the truth is we're really only seeking one. Right. And that's the right to bodily liberty. We don't really care if happy is called a person, a place, or a thing. Like, I mean, I don't like the, the name thing, but I, it's not the label we're after, we're after the substance. Yeah. Um, and so you can give her the right to vote and it would do very little, even though it would be a really significant right. It doesn't make sense for an elephant. What we want is her to have the right to exercise the choices that she's able to make. Mm-hmm. In the wild, you know, where do I want to go? Who do I wanna talk to? What do I want to eat? Like these are highly intelligent. Very, you know, a complex social species and you're depriving her of every single ability to make choices when she's, you know, in this environment. So yeah, that's, that's the idea. We want her to have the right to not be in that environment. No, no other right. Matters to that. And so that would give her the personhood, right. For the purpose of. The rid of habeas corpus, the right to be free from bodily restraint, but it would not give her any other, right. It would not give any other elephant any. Right. That's kind of the limitations of this court process too, is that it is just the one elephant. It's precedent for other elephants, but it's at the end of the day, we're also only able to do so much too. Yeah. And let's imagine, uh, and again, we'll get into the details later. Uh, in happiest case, uh, you didn't win. But let's imagine that you had won. Why would that not, uh, inherently give the same right, to all elephants? Yeah, in a way I, in a way it would in a way, wouldn't it? So, The best analogy is to look at is the slave cases, the, um, where black slaves had been, um, you know, detained by masters and they were able to use the writ of habeas corpus to free themselves from those confinements. So two were women that were considered considered chattel property under the English common law. They could use this ancient rit in the 16 hundreds when they had no other right to, to see kbs corpus. Um, so, so that's kind of the like, The gist of what the right, what the right gives you, um, is just sort of the, yeah. The freedom from bodily restraint. All right. And where does science play its role in this? Because I always think about it as, okay, if you. If you go to court to defend the right of personhood, then you obviously, in my head, you'd have to talk about sentience and in to a certain extent, I'm guessing intelligence and, and you know, the, the ability to feel and have thoughts. But then again, boats have personhood. So I feel like that's not very a strong point. But does science play a role? And if yes, how? Yeah, I mean the science is crucial in our case. Um, and I guess like backing up, I should, I should clarify cuz our legal system might be different than others is we have like in, in the US and in some cou many countries, I guess, I don't know how many, but there's sort of three sources of law. Maybe there's more, but you've got court made law and that's kind of, this kind of answers the last question you asked about the limitations or why it wouldn't be precedent or why it wouldn't automatically, I guess you asked why it wouldn't automatically, yeah. So like in the case of a black slave, they, they could free one slave, but it would take an act of. Parliament or of the legislature to, to emancipate all slaves. So it would be one. So the Somerset versus Stewart case was the famous example. And so, so here is, is is that utilization of the common law. The judge made law that's flexible, adaptable, and can meet the needs of the existing current situation. And they're actually, the courts are required in our country, the common law, they have a common law duty cause it's their body of law to. Upkeep it with the science, the ethics, and like conventional, not notions of, you know, equality and things of today. And so that's where the science comes in. Um, the legislature doesn't have this obligation. They pass laws when they want to, but the courts, because they make their judgment law and they're, they're an institution based off of. Justice of balancing justice, the legislatures, the will of the people. This is about not the will of the people. This is about what is right? Mm-hmm. What is right. Morally, ethically, scientifically, were we was our old rule that animals have no rights, that they can't have this right to bodily liberty based off of. You know, antiquated science. Well, yeah, it was ba back a hundred years ago. We didn't know the elephants had 45 minute long conversations with one another. We didn't know they could convey their ancient migratory roots through communication. Um, you know, or like that they had these, you know, intense altruistic, um, social bonds. We just didn't have the science. And now we have world renowned, you know, our case had five of the most world renowned elephant scientists. Um, all unanimous. That elephants are autonomous, that it's basically like detaining a human being. To detain an elephant in this kind of environment. It's not the same as putting a dog in a house is fundamentally different. It's like putting a human being in there and saying, you know, we're taking good care of her cuz we test her blood every day. And she's friends with the, with with the zookeepers, you know, she's friends with the guards. It's like, yeah, that's besides the point. She doesn't wanna be there. She doesn't, it's not where she belongs. So, yeah, that's, that's kind of the gist of what. Yeah, I'm gonna have to do some research. I had no idea they would have 45 minutes long conversations. I didn't either until I was prepping for this case. I mean, I did cuz we, you know, we put it in our petition like a lot of the science, but sometimes some of this gets lost on, on us. And I think for those of us that are, that are, that care deeply about welfare, it's almost like it's enough to me that she's suffering. It doesn't matter in a way that she's intelligent too. Of course. And so, That's why I almost, and actually knowing that makes it more horrendous, like and horrific to know what's happening. And so I kind of think I shielded myself from some of these facts. Cause I was aware they were on the table. I, I put them in the briefs and stuff, but once I was like prepping to argue the case, I was like, I. Wow. Wait. So you know, we're thinking about animals communicating and it's not just like they're making these little like yes or no decisions. They're making, they're like analyzing things. They're like, oh, the Messiah live here. The Messiah, uh, they don't like one group of people, but they like the, the other group of people cuz they, you know, only scare them off with water rather than shoot at them. So there's like our studies that we presented to the court and you can find them on our website really like unearth some really jaw-dropping science and it's. That's the sad thing about science generally is that it's like it's. People like Kim Kardashian, I don't know if you know who she is, but the celebrities make so much attention and everyone knows what's going on in Taylor Cis life. And it's like, but elephants can talk for 45 minutes with one another. Like so it's, yeah, I found that science cool. And I had a fun time trying to explain it to the judges. They might have just thought I was a crazy lunatic. Cause there's like this, um, touchdown or what is it? I see. I don't know. Sports, but there's like elephants do this like high five after they've rushed off of an enemy, they get together and they're like, yeah, we did that. And they like high five each other and it's called like a touchdown dance or something. And I'm like, that's so cool. Like you don't see dogs and cats high fiving each other. That's true. Not to put down dogs and cats. I'm just saying these are phenomenal animals. Yeah. We definitely don't know enough, um, about other animals. And what are the main arguments for and against personhood that you can share with us? Yeah. So I guess the proper way to look at it is the right, like for or against the right to bodily liberty. And when we talk about the right to bodily liberty, we ask like, what is relevant to that? Right? Like when I brought up the right to vote or the right to bear arms, I mean, relevant would be like, are you able to be responsible to have a gun? Are you responsible to vote? You know, so we look at what traits are relevant to the right at issue and the right at issue here is. Are you able to, are you aware that you're confined? Are you, or it doesn't even, I mean, frankly, the law applies to, to comatose adults, you know, an adult human being who, who is not aware of their confinement, who is, you know, in a, in a comatose state, has the right to bodily liberty. Cause we cherish the right so much. But the fact that you're aware of your confinement, that you are, um, you know, similarly situated to a human being. Based on the science. That's what all of our five world renowned experts are saying is that. She, because of her co cognitive complexity, because of her, um, you know, empathy and altruism and all these traits, it's just like, it's, she's similarly situated to humans for the right to bodily liberty. She's not similarly situated to humans to, for the right to drive or other things. So it's like that's kind of the argument. And the other, the other side of that is that it's actually, it violates. Like the core notion of equality to say no, because our law also requires that like cases be treated alike and Yeah. You know when you have two groups that are similarly situated for one purpose and you say you get all the rights and all the, all the ice cream on the cake and you get nothing. Just cause for no reason. You, you look different, you know, you, you're this, it's like that's not allowed. And so for the law to perpetuate an arbitrary discrimination threatens the rule of law itself. It threatens our legal system cuz it's based off of liberty and equality really. And so when you're saying that, well equality only matters to this extent, but we'll accept this massive, arbitrary, you know, discrimination, um, yeah. It's not the kind of discrimination that hurts your. You're, you know, emotional wellbeing, like to know you're a second class citizen. It's a type of discrimination that the law has always disfavor because it, we can't have a, an arbitrary, you know, irrational legal system. And so that's, that's kind of the main argument on the other side of this is if you don't recognize this, you're perpetuating a wrong and you have a duty to correct that wrong. As a court, a common law court. All right. And when we talk about personhood, for example, cuz, cuz it also has the word person in it and you share that with someone and you say, well, um, we're, we should give the right of personhood to other animals. What is it? Um, logically and also legally speaking, uh, That, uh, stops the, let's say, in this case, an animal to have the all the same rights as a human. You know, like obviously like a cow or, or an elephant doesn't need to drive a car or, or vote, but Right. That's, doesn't the status automatically give the other rights as well? That's a, that's the great question, and that's why like looking to analogies makes sense. So if we look back to the cases where women who. Back in the 16 hundreds in England, who, when they got married, they were considered the chattel of their husband. Their husbands could do all they wanted with them. Um, but they still had this one right to bodily liberty and could seek habeas corpus to free themselves if they could prove that their husband was, uh, Abusing them. So they had no rights to own property. They couldn't have a contract. And even after getting the rid of Habe Corpus issued and sent to a new home, a new husband, they still had no weather rights. They just had the right to bodily liberty. So if so, the point is that when you're. It would be different if you were born in the United States as a human and you would get the whole monopoly of, you know, our constitutional rights and everything that flows from, you know, being a civil, you know, there's, it's, I guess it's like civil rights. It's your constitutional civic things that come with being. A member of the Human Society, but we recognize rights. Yeah. Again, for, for, um, corporations, for nature, we, we have regulations like it's one of the, the arguments that our opponents made and that we saw from the amicus briefs on the other side, which are called, they're called front of the court briefs, which allow groups to come in. Philosophers, anyone that ostensibly has an opinion that's. An expert opinion on a subject, the courts will let them bring it in. So we had all these wonderful philosophers, law professors, you know, judges, moral ethics, all of the heart and soul on our side. And it was like the ag industry, trade corporations, all corporations on the other side. But their, their argument was something like that, that. It would, you know, open the floodgates to allow the, to put animals in the court system. You know, everyone's gonna be litigating over dogs and cats. We can't open the court system to animals, but the court system's already been open to animals. Like we had trials hundreds of years ago where we put pigs on trial. Um, for, I mean, it was all just bogus e bogus stuff. But, um, even just in custody cases, what do you do with the dog? They, yes, often analyze custody cases through the lens of. The best interest of the dog now. Mm-hmm. Or like the best interest of the pet, which is what we do with children, almost like, without even thinking about it, because we all know our pets are like family members. And so courts have been treating them like that, even though that's a huge leap in the law. So, um, yeah. So I guess all of this is to say that even when the courts say, say there's a, a statute that says the court that dogs have a right. To be in the best home when in a, in a divorce proceeding, that would give the dog a limited. Right. It wouldn't let them have any other Right. But they would have the one right to have the best home and, and that would be some progress. Okay. And what would you say is the biggest obstacle when you're fighting for things like this? Yeah, I mean, I think it is the, um, I, well it's, it's resistance to any, it's resistance to change. It's the fear of change and, um, I, it's, so I think that's where the judges kind of are, are stuck and I think that fear, um, of losing political money or something. I mean, cuz the agricultural, like if we didn't have to deal with. Trade industries coming in with their big trade money and saying, you know, there's no connection between freeing, happy and the dairy industry. I mean, even if, even if the court said, I'm gonna free all the elephants, like if I was a judge, and let's just say I went off the rails and issued an opinion free all the elephants in California. I wouldn't have jurisdiction to do that, and even if I did, the court would just, the legislature could pass a law and override what I did. Yeah, because that's kind of how the system works, is statutes can override the, the common law. They can't override constitutional law, but so it's like I. So, so this concern is really, is hot air. I mean, it's like, no one, it's not even possible. No, it's never gonna happen. So there are empty threats, but yet they seem to hold the weight because they're, they're really what drives that. And so it's, I think it's just, it's greed and, and power and resistance to change. And I think a little bit of it is, I think the public sentiment has to change, and I think it is changing for good. And I think this is where really like things are getting good because everyday people are now sort of starting to see like, yeah, zoos, zoos are kind of wrong. Like they might still wanna eat meat, they're not gonna be the people that go completely vegan, but they're people that can see the difference between a caterpillar and an elephant. And currently the law doesn't see any difference between an elephant, a cat, a pig. A horse, I mean, or ant or, mm-hmm. And I'm not trying to put down an ant or a lobster, but at least scientifically it's shown that elephants are much more like us than, than we in el we and elephants are more like similar in a lot of ways than we are to dogs, like elephants are like in our club, you know? And so it's just like, that's so unfair to treat an elephant like. I, I actually, I really want to meet an elephant now. I know. I, I would love to meet, I just wanna stare at them and, and wonder like the thoughts that they're having, um, talking about happy, what is happy story and what happened exactly. It's really sad. She was stolen from her native Thailand during the time period of the Vietnam War, so she's about 50 years old. Um, she was taken as a baby, um, which is just when you think about like what kind of mentality, it's like, let's just take this elephant out of a forest and bring it to the United States and put, so they put her and her family, I think it was like her sisters or cousins in, um, some sort of performance like. Enclosure, like where she was doing tug of war things, um, which we now know perform elephant performances are just, uh, like again, ma forcing a human to do these performances. Yeah. Um, so luckily we're at least at that point. But, um, yeah, so she was forced to do that and then they ended up moving her to the Bronx Zoo. They had her in an enclosure with, um, Several other elephants at one point Grumpy Maxine and Patty Grumpy was her cousin, I think. And Patty and Maxine attacked Grumpy, which is really sad. And then this would never happen in In the Wild or in her native lands. But because of the enclosure was so small and all of our experts attested to the fact that like, just like human beings, if you put human beings in too small of a space under these, you know, Awful conditions, they're going to be get snappy at each other. And so anyway, so the sad thing is that because they're such so social species, it's like extra wrong to detain them alone and yet happy. And Patty now have a fence between them and they don't, they can't interact. So both of them are isolated alone. But yeah, the, and the Bronx Zoo knows that this is wrong. And they've said they're not gonna replace their elephants when they. When they die off and it's like, well they don't have to die off. There are sanctuaries for them right now. Yeah. And the Bronx Zoo is saying, no, she's better off with us. Um, but yet they still hold the view that, that this is no place for elephants cuz they've phased out the exhibit. So it's like, it really, it's, it's, it's gotta be just, you know, some sort of psychological power struggle thing. Yeah. It's very weird because when they say, well, we won't have more elephants, it's kind of like, than, you know, Exactly. It's not the right thing. Well then if, you know, then act on it now. Just I, they should have some mercy, at least for, for, that's exactly it. Whatever's left, um, from Happy's life to just live freely. And that that case, um, you lost it and. Can you share on on what basis you, you lost or is it too complicated to get into? No, it's not really too complicated cause we can kind of tether it to what the lower court had ruled. But we, we had two levels of court before the highest court in New York and the court we, because we've. Brought other cases before elephants. We had our chimpanzee cases. We ended up losing those cases even though we made progress by even bringing them. And we ended up getting an H B O documentary about us called Unlocking the Cage. And I think that in turn helped more judges start to think about these ideas. So, Come round when we brought our first elephant case, we did have some precedent already against us that we had to grapple with, and that precedent was held that we could. Habe corpus doesn't apply to chimpanzee because a chimpanzee cannot bear. Responsibilities or legal duties is the ruling. But like that makes no sense cuz human, many human beings don't bear legal duties, but we give them rights. Rights are not tethered to legal duties in that way. It might impose a duty on someone else, but you can have plenty of rights that are not tethered to duties. And so this ruling that was issued was, um, Fundamentally against just human law. Um, so ultimately when we refiled it, we actually got a judge who completely sided with us at the lo, the lowest court level. And she was like, you have made a very compelling case. I would side with you if I wasn't stuck with this dumb ruling that says this, but because I'm a lowest court judge, I have to. Rule against you, but I wish I could rule for you. We also got a court of appeals decision from a middle court, from, sorry, from the highest court judge, but he wrote a concurrence in one of our chimpanzee cases that said, you know, I think that they might be on something. And I, I think that I side with them and we think that that opinion's why we got our case up when we did, because yeah, we only take like 5% of these cases. So for us to get the court to take our case was a victory period. Like that was, that was a win in itself. Um, so ultimately when we lost the court was affirming that middle court ruling. So we, we lost on the second court level by saying, no, we're the duties and responsibilities thing. They also said that because, ha, even if habeas corpus could apply, To an elephant because she's being just transferred to a sanctuary versus being free onto the streets of New York. That habeas corpus doesn't apply here, and that also is wrong because children are transferred all the time with habeas corpus inmates have been able to seek something less than complete release, so none of the reasons held water we lost on those same two reasons that don't hold water, but that actually gives us. More umph like there's no good reason for us to lose. And um, we got two amazing dissents, not just cuz they dissented, which is a big deal in New York. Dissent means a judge that says I disagree. And there were seven judges on the court of appeals and two of those judges I. Fundamentally disagreed with the the other five and wrote very long opinions saying why we're right. And that was a big deal, like a hundred pages of opinion in total. So it's huge. And we can take those two dissents and say two of the highest. Two judges on the highest court of New York plus a third. The Judge Behe, who wrote that separate thing, um, from our chimpanzee case, three of the highest judges in, uh, one of the biggest states in our country agree with us. Like, that's huge. So we never saw this as a loss and, um, As much as an incremental, but a big incremental win because getting the case there, getting judges decide with us, getting all the media attention we got, um, yeah, it's, it's, it was, it's been good. That's, that's really great. So I was wondering, when you are doing these cases, the, the first thing that I thought was, Did they really have a chance of winning or do they do it even though they know they're gonna lose because lose the final result of losing doesn't necessarily mean that the whole thing was a loss. It's more about putting this on the table. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we, we went into our first case. I mean, we've always gone into our cases knowing. We have the potential to win, we believe greatly in the merit of our cases. This is not like, uh, you know, pita for instance, files a lot of great things or does a lot of great things, but sometimes they file things intentionally for media for better or worse. But sometimes those cases are not like thoroughly thought out legally, or might even backfire legally. And I, again, not pointing fingers because we've all had bad cases, but just that. We've gone in knowing that the law and the facts are fundamentally on our side across the board, but yet the judge's opinions, you know, in societal bias against animals having rights is so strong that the chances of winning are very slim. Um, and so go, but, but we also know that the nature of the common law is that it does build off of society's, you know, like, you know, the, the moral, moral compass of today and the science of today. And, um, so the momentum that we could build. We didn't have any idea that the amount of publicity that we would get, I mean, I think we always knew that, you know, just like any case, I do First Amendment cases in my other job, I always get some publicity. Maybe I'll go on Fox News. But the amount of publicity we've gotten, we could never foresee. And that in itself is a humongous source. I mean, for the reason that Peter would file a case just to bring publicity, we're getting the publicity cuz of what we're filing. Ha has so much merit, it's. The, it's attracting legal scholars. We have Jane Goodall on our board of directors. You know, we've got these world renowned elephant scientists that are regularly on P B S shows and National Geographic shows. And so the notoriety of, of what we're doing, I think is bringing in the, in that, some of that. But anyway, so yeah know, knowing that we were gonna lose was certainly at the beginning, you know, 10 years ago when we filed the chimpanzee cases. And each time we filed, we have, we have more hope. But again, knowing the resistance. Um, so for me personally, when I went in to argue this case, which, which, um, the Atlantic, one of our big publications in the us. Said it was like the most important animal rights case of the 21st century. Just the court even taking the cases, historic. Um, you know, I had that attitude of like, this is already history. You know, if we win, that would be even more history and insanely awesome. But like, I would love to just be able to change. You know, the minds of a few people in the public that are watching this or hearing this or you know, the judges to get them to think about it better. And so that's why the gift of getting two, not one dissent, but two really compelling dissents, the content of what are in those written opinions from these two judges are, is so deep. You know, one of the judges is comparing is gets into the nitty gritty about, um, slavery, black slavery, and how. You know, the reliance on those cases is in no way, shape or form comparing an elephant to a human being in terms of like characteristics. But our opponents like to spin everything because that's what oppressors kind of do, right? It's like, it's like the same mentality. And so he was able to take apart that kind of oppressor mentality and say, just because. This doesn't mean that, but at the same time, when you fix animal rights and when you target, when you, when you go against these oppressors, you're actually paving the way for more human rights. Yes. Like this is, we should all care about happy because we should all care about humans. And like they go hand in hand. And so what's written in those opinions is all in, in those dissents is it is so much more than we expected. So in some ways it's like I went in expecting. I was hoping to just not have them make fun of us. You know, like have it be really harsh on us and like, why are you wasting our time? Like, get out of our state. You filed too many of these. Like we had no idea what their attitudes would be. So they took us very seriously. I think I got a question from every single member of the court. They ended up letting us go way over the time allotted. Um, we got 10 minutes allotted and I think I spoke for like 30 minutes cuz they had that many questions. Like it wasn't just me talking, it was like, wait, no, but I wanna know this. I wanna know this. And. All the judges were curious and they weren't like hostile. They were curious. I mean, they had maybe hostile tone. I think some people didn't like the tone of the judges, but that's just how judges talk. Okay. And how can the general public help someone who's not directly involved in this? They see what you're doing. Are there petitions or how does it work? Yes. Well, we have our change.org petition. Um, I don't want to say the wrong url, but it's, it's like free happy, um, on the change.org. Yeah. But we also have on our website, which again, I'm really bad with links, but I'm sure we can get them to you afterwards. Um, I'll put them in the description. Okay, cool. Yeah, so we have a link somewhere on our, our website. For specific form letters to send to the Bronx Zoo and specifically the board, the, the board of directors, um, that makes those decisions like putting pressure on them cuz it's actually also the Conserv Wildlife Conservation Society that also gets to decide this cuz they own part of the Bronx Zoo. So it's, it's very confusing. But the bottom line is we've got forms also tweeting about happy, um, and taking to social media. Is, is really, really, really helpful because it's also the same thing as putting the pressure on on those that are in charge, but also again, like, like getting it, you know, if celebrities are very instrumental, Cher helped get Kivan out of, um, Kivan the elephant out of Pakistan. Um, it, you know, I think Cher did end up tweeting about our case, but it would be lovely to get like some younger. Not that, not age matters, but just like some cool, some young hip celebrities to like tweet about happy or just, but any people, like any people will get attention and, and it's that attention that builds upon, um, you know, itself. Yeah. And helps the court see that this is. It being taken seriously and, and like we are, we see these shifts each year. Each year we've filed a new case where we've been in front of new judges and it's like it's getting better and better and better as far as like who knows about happy, like, I'll run into people around my community and I live, I. In California, which is as far away from New York as possible, where I argued the case and people know about happy because of, of our case. Yeah. And it's just so amazing that that's, you know, like that you found us out about us. Like, I mean it's just, it's really, that's, yeah, that's the power of people. That is the power of media and all the individuals like I've, you know, thanked the reporters that have, have done interviews for us, um, because it's. That's how, that's how progress happens. So, yeah. Yeah. I'm not even on the other side of the country. I'm on the other side of the world. Yeah. And I heard about it, so it, it shows that. So cool. Okay. And, uh, my last question, I ask this to every single person I, I interview, uh, what are your core principles that help you fight for change? Yeah, I mean, honestly just animals having rights kind of has been a core principle of mine. Like when I was in third grade, I, I, I became vegetarian cause I knew that a chicken was meat. So I think I have, maybe some people have that internal, like animal, animal improvement for animals. Like maybe it's the innocence of them combined with the helplessness of the situation and the wrongness of the combination of that just, just inherently drives me. Um, And yeah, I mean, I think, I think any kind of in severe injustice, you know, for humans, the environment, something, you know, that, that just drives me, if I have the ability to fix it, I, it kind of makes me feel responsible or if I have the ability, not even ability to fix it, but to con, to increase the chances of that thing. So, I mean, I, I guess you could philosophically describe me. I'm a, I'm a humanist, but I'm also an effective alt altruist and, um, yeah. Amazing. Monica, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot and I'm sure everyone who's listening will learn as well. I hope this will inspire people to take part in this kind of activism as well, because it's definitely extremely powerful. Uh, thank you so much to you and all the team. Um, yeah, thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you. We're really grateful. I hope you enjoyed listening to the work of non-human rights project, as much as I did. I hope you felt inspired. I think it's absolutely amazing that there are people out there doing this work. If you enjoy this podcast, please feel free to leave a review. On whichever platform you're using to listen to it. And if you'd like to support it in any way, please check out my website's up. alex.org. Thank you again for joining us today. I'll see. In the next episode.