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Hawaii Supreme Court will hear case seeking freedom for elephants The Hawaii Supreme Court will determine whether two wild-born Asian elephants that have lived at the Honolulu Zoo for decades can be legally held in confinement.The state supreme court accepted the application of writ certiorari last week for the case brought by the Nonhuman Rights Project, a nonprofit animal rights organization, against the city and county of Honolulu.The state’s highest court will review a lower court’s decision and hear oral arguments.The court order directs that the case be scheduled, but a date has not been set.The case seeks recognition of the right to liberty of elephants Mari and Vaigai through a common law writ of habeas corpus, a mechanism typically used to fight unlawful detention.Mari and Vaigai were captured in the wild.Mari has lived at the Honolulu Zoo since 1982 and Vaigai since 1992, according to a June 12 press release from the Nonhumans Rights Project.The group argues that elephants are autonomous beings with complex cognitive, emotional and social lives, and they warrant legal protection.“This is a historic moment for Mari and Vaigai and for the broader effort to secure fundamental legal rights for animals,” said Jake Davis, a senior staff attorney for the group, in the press release.“By agreeing to hear this case, the Hawaii Supreme Court has recognized the significance of the legal questions presented.We look forward to presenting their case before Hawaii’s highest court and demonstrating why the common law should protect their fundamental interest in liberty.” The move is significant, wrote Delcianna Winders, an associate professor and the director of the Animal Law & Policy Institute at the Vermont Law and Graduate School, to the ABA Journal.“Should that court ultimately reverse the lower court ruling and recognize that at least certain animals are legal persons entitled to assert their fundamental interests in court, it will be the first court in the nation to do so,” added Winders, who received the ABA Tort Trial and Insurance Practice Section’s Excellence in the Advancement of Animal Law Award in 2025.“Though such a decision would be specific to Mari and Vaigai, it would be a groundbreaking rejection of the speciesist notion that only humans have fundamental legal rights,” she added.In 2022, New York’s highest court ruled that elephants are not legal persons, after a writ of habeas corpus did not apply to Happy, an elephant at the Bronx Zoo.Happy died last month.Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.