On October 17, 2025 the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed a trial court’s summary denial of a writ of habeas corpus brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project seeking to have seven chimpanzees released from the DeYoung Family Zoo and transferred to an animal sanctuary. Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v. DeYoung Family Zoo, LLC, No. 369247 (Mich. App. Oct. 17, 2025). Plaintiff never got out of the blocks. The courts did not even require the zoo to show cause or file an opposition to the writ.
The appellate court noted that while the writ is protected by the state constitution, its availability is prescribed by statute. A habeas action can be brought by any person on behalf of a prisoner, i.e., a person with a cognizable interest in personal liberty. But neither the constitution nor the statute provides detail on who qualifies as a “person.” The court therefore looked to the common law. Centuries of English common law plainly established that the category of persons was confined to human beings and artificial entities such as corporations. Animals were treated as objects of property. Slip op. at 10-11.
In this regard, the court rejected plaintiff’s “odious” analogy to the plight of women and enslaved persons:
Plaintiff’s analogies to habeas proceedings involving women or enslaved persons do not alter this landscape. Plaintiff cites no authority suggesting that women were not “persons” at common law. The slavery analogy cuts the other way: The atrocity of slavery was that the law permitted persons to be treated as property. Blackstone observed that the origins of slavery were “built upon false foundations” and that “the law of England abhors, and will not endure the existence of, slavery within this nation.” . . . Those episodes reflect failures to honor human personhood, not expansions of it beyond the human species. [Slip op. at 12; citations omitted.]
As the court summed it up:
[C]himpanzees are animals, and as the common law authorities all make clear, animals – including wild animals, such as these chimpanzees – are treated as property. No exception exists for “intelligent” animals, which in any event has no natural stopping point – “[e]ven a dog distinguishes between being stumbled over and being kicked.”
. . .
A central aspect of personhood is mankind’s capacity to “give[] up a part of his natural liberty” and oblige[] himself to conform to those laws, which the community has thought proper to establish.” . . . Chimpanzees – and nonhuman animals generally – are incapable of making this exchange. [Slip op. at 13; citations omitted.]
In addition to Michigan, the Nonhuman Rights Project has now lost on this same habeas corpus issue with respect to chimpanzees and elephants in the states of New York, Connecticut and California.