MUTED
Tilikum ex rel. PETA v. Sea World Parks & Entertainment, Inc.
842 F. Supp. 2d 1259 (S.D. Cal. 2012) · 2012
PETA argued that five orcas were enslaved under the 13th Amendment. The court said slaves must first be persons.
“The only reasonable interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment's plain language is that it applies to persons, and not to non-persons such as orcas.”
The Ruling
Judge Jeffrey Miller of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California dismissed the action for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, holding that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition on slavery and involuntary servitude applies only to persons, and that orcas — Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka, and Ulises — are not persons within the meaning of the Amendment. The court did note that 'animals have many legal rights, protected under both federal and state laws,' but declined to extend the constitutional category.
The Personhood Argument Not Made
Tilikum is the inverse of Citizens United. Where the Court has had no difficulty extending Fourteenth Amendment personhood to corporations — fictional entities with no consciousness — it refused to extend Thirteenth Amendment protection to creatures whose neuroanatomy supports self-recognition, culture, and grief. The asymmetry is the doctrine. Personhood for capital is generous and self-renewing; personhood for sentience is policed at the species line. The 13th Amendment, written to abolish chattel slavery, is read so narrowly that it cannot reach a creature confined for life in a tank one-thousandth the volume of its natural range.
The Execution Gap Created
Tilikum died in captivity at SeaWorld Orlando on 6 January 2017 — five years after his case was dismissed. He had killed three people during his 33 years of confinement. SeaWorld ended its orca breeding program in 2016, but the change came from public pressure following the 2013 documentary Blackfish, not from any legal recognition of cetacean personhood. The court closed the door; the documentary opened the window.
Primary sources & research
Related cases
Part of The Personhood Prism, the companion to The Execution Gap by Thomas William Hornig. See all personhood cases →