The Nonhuman Rights Project has filed the first lawsuit in the US to establish the legal personhood of chimpanzees.

The animal rights group has asked a New York state court to declare Tommy, a 26 year old chimp, “a cognitively complex autonomous legal person with the fundamental legal right not to be imprisoned”. President of the Nonhuman Rights Project Steven Wise explained that chimpanzees have complex cognitive abilities that are strictly protected when possessed by humans.

The court has also been asked to order Tommy’s immediate release to a primate sanctuary.

Read more here.

A progress report on this case (and 2 similar cases filed by the Nonhuman Rights Project) is available here.

Photo courtesy of CBC News