A case of whether seven chimpanzees, currently all at the DeYoung Family Zoo in the Menominee County community of Wallace, should be granted habeas corpus rights was heard by the Michigan Court of Appeals on Tuesday. In the hearing, judges and lawyers debated the threshold — if not biological species — of when to grant such rights.
The Nonhuman Rights Project, a legal advocacy organization, has sued the DeYoung Family Zoo for living conditions that they consider to be violations of the bodily liberty of chimpanzees housed there.
Lawyers for the chimpanzees are seeking an order to hear the merits of the case — essentially, to have a decision on the content of the case, as opposed to procedural matters — in the suit for the habeas corpus rights of seven chimpanzees, who the group refers to