Editor’s Note: Law Week Colorado edits court opinion summaries for style and, when necessary, length.
People v. Jesus Rodriguez-Morelos
In 2015, Jesus Rodriguez-Morelos started running certified nursing assistant classes, falsely telling prospective students that the classes were affiliated with the nonprofit organization United with Migrants. After receiving complaints about the classes, including that Rodriguez-Morelos was unlawfully receiving money for classes the state hadn’t approved, the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies investigated.
Rodriguez-Morelos was charged with several crimes, including identity theft in violation of Section 18-5-902(1)(a) of the Colorado Revised Statutes, which prohibits the knowing use of the personal identifying information of another to obtain a financial benefit. The statute defines personal identifying information as certain documents and information that can be used to identify a specific individual.
Given the statutory language, Rodriguez-Morelos argued that he couldn’t be found guilty of identity theft under this provision because the classes he offered were associated with a nonprofit organization and not a specific individual.
The Colorado Supreme Court agreed. It found the provision of the identity-theft statute that references personal identifying information applies only to information concerning single, identified human beings.
The court affirmed the judgment of the Colorado Court of Appeals
Nonhuman Rights Project v. Cheyenne Mountain Zoo
Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo are five elderly African elephants that live at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Nonhuman Rights Project, a nonprofit corporation that identifies its mission as seeking to secure legal rights for highly intelligent nonhuman animals, filed a verified petition for writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the elephants to secure their transfer to a “suitable elephant sanctuary.”
In its petition, NRP asserted that the elephants were unlawfully confined at the CMZ by the Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Society and its president and CEO Bob Chastain. NRP argued that the elephants have a right to bodily liberty because they are autonomous and extraordinarily cognitively and socially complex beings.
The district court granted the zoo’s motion to dismiss. As required in ruling on a motion to dismiss, the court accepted the allegations in NRP’s petition as true, including its assertion that elephants cannot function normally in captivity. Addressing NRP’s argument that the common law has historically been used to extend the writ of habeas corpus, the court noted that no U.S. court has extended the right to nonhuman animals and, regardless, that the right to habeas corpus in Colorado is a creature of statute.
Turning to that statute, the court concluded that the law only authorizes habeas relief for “any person” and does not extend to nonhuman animals like the elephants. The district court held that the elephants didn’t have standing to seek habeas relief and therefore the court didn’t have subject matter jurisdiction to hear the case. The court also determined that NRP didn’t have proper next friend status to bring a habeas petition on the elephants’ behalf because it failed to establish that it was in a better position to speak for the elephants than the zoo.
This case went to the Colorado Supreme Court on direct appeal of the dismissal of a habeas corpus proceeding. The appeal required the court to decide whether the liberty interests protected by the writ of habeas corpus extend to nonhuman animals.
NRP contended that the district court erred in dismissing its habeas petition because the five elephants that are the subject of the petition, Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo, lacked standing to seek relief via the writ.
The state Supreme Court concluded that the district court correctly held that Colorado’s habeas statute only applies to persons, and not to nonhuman animals, no matter how cognitively, psychologically or socially sophisticated they may be. It affirmed the judgment of the district court.