The Nonhuman Rights Project has filed a new habeas corpus case supposedly on behalf of two elephants, this time in California. The most important thing, I think, is that the new filing shows that these cases were not just a personal project of Steven Wise, the longtime head of the NhRP, who died last year. Whoever is leading the organization now seems to share his view that these cases are a good idea.

It’s a little surprising that the NhRP decided to file its next case in California, given that both a trial court and an appellate court (the NhRP, exceptionally, filed an original petition in the appellate court rather than appealing an unfavorable decision to that court) has already denied a elephant habeas petition filed by the group. I’m surprised or maybe not surprised that the NhRP didn’t cite the earlier decisions in its petition. Presumably its view will be that the appellate court denied the petition without giving its reasons, so it’s impossible to know whether it denied the petition because elephants obviously aren’t persons entitled to petition for a writ of habeas corpus or whether it denied the petition because it was wrong to file the petition in the appellate court in the first instance; I’m not sure why the NhRP wouldn’t at least reference the lower court decision.

I’ve given reasons for finding these quixotic and (so far) uniformly unsuccessful cases to be harmful to animals and to people and helpful only to the lawyers who claim to know what the elephants want here, here, here, and elsewhere. I’m not going to repeat it here. In short, a lot of time and money has been wasted on an obviously incorrect legal theory that does or should have no chance of success in our courts. It would have been better spent on advocating for changes to animal welfare laws or other steps that could actually be good for elephants.

One characteristically absurd occurrence in this new case: the NhRP couldn’t get its petition filed. It says the clerk of the court in Los Angeles rejected the filing four times, perhaps because the petition was brought on behalf of an elephant, and that the court finally accepted the petition for filing. But by the time that happened, the elephants were no longer in California but were in Oklahoma. The NhRP has filed a motion for leave to file a supplemental petition. I’m not a habeas expert let alone a California habeas expert, but it’s hard to see a habeas petition succeeding if the prisoner is not in custody in the jurisdiction at the time the petition is filed.