The animal rights group bases the complaint against the aquatic theme parks on the fact that the 13th Amendment prohibiting slavery and involuntary servitude contains no language indicating that it applies solely to human beings
The suit which was assembled over a period of eighteen months by Jeff Kerr, PETA's general counsel, along with a five member legal team, lists five performing Orcas at SeaWorld's parks in California and Florida - Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises - as plaintiffs. Acting on behalf of the whales, as “next friends" are PETA and two former SeaWorld employees who have become activists opposing the captivity of marine mammals. In the admittedly unlikely event that PETA prevails in the case, SeaWorld would be required to release the whales into the custody of a legal guardian who would then place them in a “suitable habitat."
In a statement released concurrent to the lawsuit's filing, Ingrid Newkirk, the President of the Virginia-based non-profit stated, “All five of these Orcas were violently seized from the ocean and taken from their families as babies. They are denied freedom and everything else that is natural and important to them while kept in small concrete tanks and reduced to performing stupid tricks."
SeaWorld San Diego responded with its own statement saying PETA's efforts to “extend the Thirteenth Amendment's solemn protections beyond human beings is baseless and in many ways offensive."
And indeed, the story has been reported with more than a hint of amusement, if not outright scorn. But PETA - which has undertaken any number of controversial actions in the past to defend animal rights - is not afraid to push the boundaries of taste and civility to attract the public's attention to its campaigns. In 2003, it provoked the ire of the Anti-Defamation League for comparing the meat industry to the Holocaust. And last year, a PETA member threw a pie in the face of a Canadian government minister to protest seal hunting. Read the full report here.
Source: by Penny Stallings, Ecology Today.
