https://www.ibanet.org/Legal-systems-increasingly-utilised-to-protect-animals

Joanne Harris – Monday 2 June 2025

In April, Michoacán became the sixth Mexican state to ban bullfighting, while the previous month, legislators in Mexico City approved legislation to reform the sport. These reforms will ban ‘traditional’ bullfighting, limiting the length of contests and preventing matadors from killing their animal opponents – making the sport ‘bloodless’. Meanwhile in 2024, the Colombian President signed a bill that calls on the country’s government to completely ban bullfights by 2027.

These developments are part of a number of recent legislative and legal efforts around the world aimed at enhancing animal welfare. In New Zealand, the government plans to outlaw greyhound racing – a result, it says, of the significant number of injuries and deaths suffered by the dogs. It intends to introduce legislation later this year. Meanwhile, a growing number of non-profit organisations are seeking to protect animal rights through the courts. 

‘It’s unmistakeable that there’s a growing trend in favour of protecting animals through the legal system,’ says Christopher Berry, Executive Director of US-based organisation the Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP). His organisation is now 30 years old, but Berry believes the use of the law to enhance animal welfare has taken strides forward in recent years.

‘We’re currently in the midst of a global change in society’s relationship with animals,’ Berry says, highlighting how science is delving deeper into their intelligence, emotions and communication. There’s reportedly a boom in such research, with an ever-increasing range of species observed using tools or playing for fun.

Helen Mitcheson, a director at non-profit legal organisation Cet Law – which focuses on advocating for the protection of whales, porpoises and dolphins – agrees science has been one of the factors in the growing regulation of facilities that house captive cetaceans in recent years. However, ‘there’s not one driver or one-size-fits-all movement to stop captivity or change practices in captivity and in a lot of cases it’s not even a legal driver. It’s driven by legislative, political and social actions,’ Mitcheson says. 

Looking back at the history of the anti-bullfighting movement in Mexico, Cecilia Stahlhut, Secretary of the IBA Healthcare and Life Sciences Committee, explains that the sport was suspended in Mexico City in 2022, but the ban was later overturned by the country’s Supreme Court in 2023. Since then, groups advocating both for and against bullfighting have been vocal on the subject.

The details of Mexico City’s reforms are still awaited. The city’s government has seven months to publish secondary regulations, detailing exactly how the changes will be brought about. ‘Most of the groups that support bullfights will wait until that moment to submit any claim against this amendment. That’s when the real legal fight will begin,’ says Stahlhut, who’s also a partner at Hogan Lovells in Mexico City.

While other states have already introduced regulations to prohibit bullfights – and also contests involving dogs – some are waiting to see how the situation in Mexico City develops, says Stahlhut. However, she adds that Mexico has strong regulations around animal protection. At the end of 2024, the Mexican Constitution was amended to explicitly protect animals from cruelty and to allow Congress to legislate in matters of their protection and welfare. 

At a federal level, these amendments to the Constitution enhanced the protection of animals in the country, and Stahlhut says the Mexico City proposals on bullfighting would bring its state legislation in line with federal laws. ‘It’s just to be consistent with what the government at a state and federal level has been working on. You can’t criminalise certain acts against animals and not other ones,’ she says. 

However, legislation protecting animals can lead to complex knock-on effects. In 2021, France banned whale and dolphin displays at aquariums – a move that has, according to park managers, directly led to the closure of facilities such as Marineland in Antibes, which shut its doors in January. Mitcheson says the park is still responsible for the care of the dolphins it had in captivity, and questions remain about where they should be sent. 

Similar questions arise in the case of Happy the elephant, who has been in captivity in the Bronx Zoo since 1977. NhRP brought a case to the New York courts arguing that Happy was entitled to the right of habeas corpus – which would allow a challenge to the elephant’s detention. The New York Court of Appeals rejected the case in 2022, but two judges wrote dissenting opinions saying Happy did have a right to freedom – even if that involved merely moving to a more spacious sanctuary. Bronx Zoo operator the Wildlife Conservation Society maintains its elephants are well cared for. 

Efforts to give animals legal rights are growing worldwide. In 2024, Polynesian Indigenous leaders signed the He Whakaputanga Moana – or Declaration for the Ocean – granting whales legal personhood. That move was followed by a pro bono initiative involving the UK’s Simmons & Simmons, marine law firm Ocean Vision Legal and the Pacific Whale Fund, to draft proposed legislation called ‘Te Mana o Te Tohorā’ (‘the enduring power of whales’), which would offer nations a pathway to adopt similar laws. ‘Legal personhood for environmental bodies is a real topic,’ says Mitcheson. ‘It’s very academic at the moment because the difficulty of it is implementation.’

Cultural barriers will probably also remain a challenge when it comes to implementing legislation protecting animals, and there are significant differences in the ways jurisdictions look at these issues – what may be permitted in one country could be banned in another. 

But recent trends certainly show a move towards enhanced animal welfare protection through legislation, regulation and the courts. ‘There’s a lot of energy and there is a lot of progress being made,’ says Berry. ‘It’s incremental and it’s frustrating and there’s a lot of obstacles in our way, but I’m very positive about the way this is headed in the long term. How fast it spreads and how quickly remains to be seen, but the trend line is for more protection and higher legal status for animals.’