Okay, that was a little legal joke, but the Ninth Circuit has confirmed that whales and other cetaceans don’t have the right to sue in US courts.
We are asked to decide whether the world’s cetaceans have standing to bring suit in their own name under the Endangered Species Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. We hold that cetaceans do not have standing under these statutes.
The question was brought up regarding the Navy’s Surveillance Towed Array Sensor System Low Frequency Active Sonar, which has been accused of hurting cetaceans.
Sooner or later, I suspect, a suit of this sort will go through. And then, boy, all hell’s gonna break loose.
(via BoingBoing)
UPDATE: More info here.
A three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco, widely considered one of the most liberal and activist in the country, said it saw no reason animals should not be allowed to sue but said they had not yet been granted that right.
“If Congress and the President intended to take the extraordinary step of authorizing animals as well as people and legal entities to sue they could and should have said so plainly,” Judge William A. Fletcher wrote in an 18-page opinion for the panel.