Rancho Santa Fe native spearheading drive to establish legal rights for cognitively complex animals

By Karen Billing

Torrey Pines High School graduate Natalie Prosin is leading a fight for the legal rights of animals. At age 29, Prosin is the executive director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, a non-profit organization with a goal to establish legal “personhood” for “nonhuman animals.”

“Our mission is to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere ‘things,’ which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to ‘persons,’ who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty,” Prosin said.

Starting next year, the Nonhuman Rights Project group will file lawsuits in state courts to attempt to give personhood status for cognitively complex animals such as great apes, dolphins, whales, elephants and African Grey parrots.

This kind of case has never been done or tried before, she said.

“It will be very historic, regardless of whether we win or not,” Prosin said. “The challenge has been to find jurisdictions most amenable to our arguments. We have 60 different legal issues across all 50 states; it’s about finding which state high court is most likely to rule in our favor.”

Their historic efforts have recently caught a lot of attention and their journey is currently a documentary film focus of Oscar-nominated filmmakers D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus.

Prosin is a Rancho Santa Fe native, attending R. Roger Rowe School. Her family moved to Del Mar while she attended Torrey Pines where she was a part of the class of 2001.

She graduated summa cum laude from Northeastern University in 2005, holds a master’s degree from Brown University and earned her law degree from Boston College Law School in 2011.

She currently lives in Washington D.C.

Prosin’s love of animals started at a young age. She rode horses at the Rancho Santa Fe Riding Club and while in high school thought she might become a veterinarian.

“In college and graduate school I started focusing more on animal issues and animal law,” Prosin said.

Learning more about issues such as animals used in laboratories and endangered species really drove her decision to go to law school.

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https://www.delmartimes.net/?p=40649

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