Seeking Personhood: Tommy the Chimp Will Get His Day in Court – Story and Picture by Alicia Graef, October 7, 2014

Seeking Personhood: Tommy the Chimp Will Get His Day in Court

Story and Picture by Alicia GraefOctober 7, 20141:00 pm

Seeking Personhood: Tommy the Chimp Will Get His Day in Court

The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) is headed back to court this week in a landmark case seeking legal personhood for a 26-year-old chimpanzee named Tommy.

Last December, the NhRP filed three groundbreaking lawsuits in New York on behalf of Tommy, and three other chimpanzees in the state that the group is seeking to have moved to a sanctuary that is part of the North American Primate Sanctuary Alliance (NAPSA). According to the group, Tommy is currently being kept alone in a “small cement cage in a dark shed in the back of a used trailer lot.”

Even if we look at Tommy’s situation and conclude it’s wrong to keep him that way, as the group noted, “one’s awareness that…