An animal rights group argued Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou and Jambo were effectively imprisoned at the zoo, and had filed to have them moved to an elephant sanctuary.

It tried to bring a habeas corpus claim on behalf of the animals – a legal process which allows a person to challenge their detention in court.

The Colorado Supreme Court said the matter boiled down to “whether an elephant is a person” and therefore had the same liberty rights as a human – ultimately deciding that they did not.

It ruled 6-0 in favour of a previous district court decision that said the state’s habeas corpus process “only applies to persons, and not to nonhuman animals”.

This was true “no matter how cognitively, psychologically, or socially sophisticated they may be,” State Supreme Court Justice Maria Berkenkotter added in her ruling.

While she said the five elderly African elephants were “majestic,” the court ruled the claim could not be brought “because an elephant is not a person”.

The Nonhuman Rights Project (NRP) petitioned for the elephants to be moved from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to a “suitable elephant sanctuary” in 2023.

The group argued the animals had a right to freedom because they were emotionally complex and intelligent animals.

It claimed the elephants showed signs of “trauma, brain damage, and chronic stress” and that they were effectively “imprisoned” at the zoo.

Cheyenne Mountain Zoo rejected the claim, arguing the elephants had received remarkable care, and was supported by a district court.

After the Supreme Court ruling, Cheyenne Mountain Zoo called NRP’s lawsuit “frivolous” and said it had “wasted” time and money on the case.

It accused the group of “abusing court systems to fundraise” and claimed its goal was “to manipulate people into donating to their cause by incessantly publicising sensational court cases with relentless calls for supporters to donate”.

NRP said the decision “perpetuate[d] a clear injustice, stating that unless an individual is human they have no right to liberty”.

“As with other social justice movements, early losses are expected as we challenge an entrenched status quo that has allowed Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo to be relegated to a lifetime of mental and physical suffering,” the group said in a statement.

An earlier bid by NRP to free an elephant named Happy from New York’s Bronx Zoo was rejected after the court judged she was not legally a person.

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The convicts are 34-year-old Wigbert Bandie, who hails from a village in Northwestern Ghana, and 30-year-old Adam Khadijah from Bole in the Savanna Region of Ghana.

Wigbert was sentenced to 63 months in November 2024 for various roles in exploiting connections to convince individuals to send them money via wire, cheque, U.S. mail, and package delivery services.

Adam Khadijah, on the other hand, was sentenced to 30 months in jail.

As part of the plea agreement filed with the court, Bandie pleaded guilty to an indictment charging him with one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1349 and 1343.

Following his incarceration, Bandie will be on supervised release for three years. Brandie was also ordered to repay $2.18 million in restitution to the 11 victims in this case.

The two convicts were facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, two counts of wire fraud, two counts of mail fraud, and money laundering. One other person, Mubarak Braimah, is still on the run.

It is alleged that from June 22, 2019, through December 31, 2019, the defendants conspired to defraud victims through romance scams, obtaining money under false pretences.

Wiggy Bandie and Mubarak Braimah allegedly targeted victims via social media, impersonating individuals overseas seeking relationships. They convinced victims to send money for shipping fees, promising profits from non-existent gold shipments. Khadijah Adam and Wiggy received these funds from the victims.

In one case, Wiggy Bandie, also known as “Kimberly McIntosh,” posed as an heiress to gold bars in Singapore, deceiving Richard Coleman, a Knoxville resident, into paying shipping fees.

Bandie created fake documents, including a memorandum of understanding for a 40% share of the gold, which Coleman signed. Mubarak Braimah, pretending to be a liaison for a fake shipping company, facilitated the scam, defrauding Coleman of $73,550.

JoyNews has learned that Wiggy Bandie, arraigned on November 27, 2023, was offered a plea bargain involving repayment and a six-year jail term, which he declined.

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A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said on Tuesday that the ban was still valid even after recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings that have expanded gun rights by requiring firearms restrictions to be in keeping with the nation’s history and tradition.

The panel said those Supreme Court rulings did not unequivocally undermine an earlier decision by the 5th Circuit holding that the plain text of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment does not encompass immigrants in the county illegally.

“We should not extend rights to illegal aliens any further than what the law requires,” U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a conservative appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, wrote in a concurring opinion.

The ruling came in an appeal by Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, who had been arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Texas in 2022 and charged with illegally possessing a handgun and unlawfully re-entering the country after being previously deported.

Medina-Cantu pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year to 15 months in prison, but he preserved the right to argue on appeal that the gun charge violated his right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

His lawyers based their argument on a landmark 2022 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority that established a new test for assessing whether modern firearm restrictions comply with the Second Amendment.

The court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required gun regulations to be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Many laws have been declared invalid following that decision.

Medina-Cantu’s lawyers argued the ruling likewise undermined a 2011 decision by the 5th Circuit upholding the immigration-related ban as there was no historical tradition dating back to around when the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791 of disarming people based solely on their immigration status.

But the three-judge panel said the Supreme Court’s recent rulings on gun rights “did not unequivocally abrogate our precedent that the plain text of the Second Amendment does not encompass illegal aliens.”

Medina-Cantu’s lawyers did not respond to requests for comment.

Source: Reuters

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The justices denied the administration’s request to partially lift lower court injunctions that had blocked the entirety of the rule expanding protections under Title IX, a law that bars sex discrimination in federally funded education programs, while litigation continues.

The lower court decisions had prevented the U.S. Education Department from enforcing the new rule, announced in April and set to take effect on Aug. 1, in Tennessee, Louisiana and eight other states.

The administration had sought to restore a key provision of clarifying that discrimination “on the basis of sex” encompasses sexual orientation and gender identity, as well as the rule’s numerous other provisions that do not address gender identity.

Biden’s administration had asked the Supreme Court to intervene on an emergency basis in a lawsuit by Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Idaho, and numerous Louisiana school boards, and another lawsuit by Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia and an association of Christian educators.

“These final regulations clarify Title IX’s requirement that schools promptly and effectively address all forms of sex discrimination,” U.S. Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Catherine Lhamon said when the rule was announced, opens new tab. “We look forward to working with schools, students and families to prevent and eliminate sex discrimination.”

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called the rule a federal overreach that would eviscerate Title IX, and criticized what she called Biden’s “extreme gender ideology.”

“This is all for a political agenda, ignoring significant safety concerns for young women students in pre-schools, elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, colleges and universities across Louisiana and the entire country,” Murrill said of the federal rule when she announced the state’s lawsuit, opens new tab.

“These schools now have to change the way they behave and the way they speak, and whether they can have private spaces for little girls or women. It is enormously invasive, and it is much more than a suggestion; it is a mandate that well exceeds their statutory authority,” Murrill added.

The states and the other plaintiffs had argued that the rule would force schools to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms, and faculty to use transgender students’ pronouns, that correspond to their gender identities.

The lawsuits are two among several that have successfully blocked the law in 22 states – nearly all Republican-governed – arguing that the Democratic president’s administration is unlawfully rewriting a law designed more than a half century ago to protect women from discrimination in education.

On July 30, the administration scored a win when a federal judge in Alabama refused to block the rule in that state, as well as Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

That ruling was temporarily halted the next day by the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

‘STRAIGHTFORWARD APPLICATION’

The Biden administration rule makes numerous changes to regulations combating sex discrimination under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, including by covering LGBT individuals as well as strengthening protections for pregnant students, parents and guardians.

The administration said protecting LGBT students under Title IX is a “straightforward application” of the Supreme Court’s landmark 2020 ruling that a similar law known as Title VII barring workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees.

U.S. Judge Terry Doughty in Monroe, Louisiana and U.S. Judge Danny Reeves in Lexington, Kentucky both concluded that Title IX’s reference to sex relates only to “biological” males and females, and that the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling did not apply in this context.

The administration has said that most of the rule has nothing to do with gender identity and should be allowed to take effect, but agreed that two key provisions – one implicating restrooms and locker rooms and the other potentially implicating the use of pronouns – could remain blocked while the appeals play out in court.

The administration also said that the rule does not change “existing requirements governing sex separation in athletics,” noting that the issue is the subject of a “separate rulemaking.”

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied requests to partially enforce the rule, prompting the administration to seek the Supreme Court’s intervention.

In June, the Supreme Court agreed to hear another case from Tennessee, involving a Republican-backed ban on gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

The court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October.

Source: Reuters

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