Jan. 30, 2025—Salt Lake City, Utah—The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP), the only civil rights organization in the US dedicated solely to securing legal rights for nonhuman animals, has filed a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of a Utah law that categorically strips the authority of courts to recognize the legal rights or duties of certain nonhuman entities.
Passed in the 2024 session, H.B. 249, which is codified as Utah Code § 63G-32-102, “is nothing more than a legislative attempt to mandate legal conclusions, which violates the Constitution and is antithetical to how the common law evolves,” the NhRP writes in its complaint. Nonhuman entities impacted by the law include nonhuman animals, land, bodies of water, and artificial intelligence. It remains unclear if corporations, which aren’t listed in the statute, are affected.
“This law takes away the power of the judiciary in Utah to interpret the law,” said Christopher Berry, Executive Director of the NhRP. “It sets a dangerous and unconstitutional precedent that the legislature can take away the ability of courts to exercise independent judgment to protect legal rights, including civil liberties.”
The author of H.B. 249 cited the progress made by the NhRP in Happy the elephant’s case in New York as one reason for the bill’s introduction. According to the author, the purpose of the law was to “define personhood as a human being.”
“In addition to being unconstitutional, H.B. 249 enshrines into law a common misunderstanding that legal persons must have the same rights as a human,” Berry said.
A legal person is an entity that has at least one legal right or one legal duty. The term isn’t synonymous with being human, and it doesn’t require having all the same rights or duties a human has. For example, corporations aren’t human but they’re considered legal persons for some purposes. And pets are treated like legal persons under Utah’s pet trust statute for the limited purpose of ensuring that money set aside for their care is actually used for their care.
The NhRP’s case on behalf of Happy–an elephant held alone in captivity in the Bronx Zoo–marked the first time a US state high court considered whether a nonhuman animal has a legal right. Two judges on that court wrote historic dissents in support of Happy’s right to liberty under the common law, which is judge-made law that’s meant to evolve along with societal norms.
“The implications of this law are too far-reaching and extreme to ignore,” said NhRP Senior Staff Attorney Jake Davis. “The separation of powers, which prevents the concentration of power into a single branch of government, is a fundamental part of American democracy. You don’t have to be a lawyer to know that the Utah legislature can’t deny judges, including judges in future generations who will decide cases in a context none of us can foretell or imagine, the ability to rule on issues in a way that accords with their interpretation of the law. We look forward to fighting for this unconstitutional anti-rights law to be struck down.”
The NhRP is represented by NhRP Senior Staff Attorney Jake Davis and local counsel Joel Ban of Ban Law Office PA based in Salt Lake City, UT. The State of Utah, the Utah Attorney General, and the Utah Governor are named as defendants in the complaint.
Read the complaint here.