SAD DAY FOR HAPPY

Sorry, Happy: Court Rules Bronx Zoo Elephant Doesn’t Have Basic Human Rights

Happy the elephant, who has been at the Bronx Zoo for 40 years, will remain in her enclosure.

Happy the elephant, who was brought to the Bronx Zoo from Asia in the 1970s, will remain in her New York City exhibit as she has for more than 40 years after an appeals court ruled she doesn’t have bodily autonomy. Animal rights advocacy group Nonhuman Rights Project argued Happy, named after one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs, was illegally detained and deserved more space to roam in a sanctuary, The New York Times reported. New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, ruled 5-2 that Happy doesn’t have the right to habeas corpus, which protects bodily liberty and can be used to protest illegal confinement. “Habeas corpus is a procedural vehicle intended to secure the liberty rights of human beings who are unlawfully restrained, not nonhuman animals,” Chief Judge Janet DiFiore wrote in a majority opinion. The advocacy group argued that the Bronx Zoo isn’t a fit environment for Happy: “She’s a depressed, screwed-up elephant,” said Steven Wise, the group’s founder, in an interview with the Times.