Animal Activists Win Standing in 2 High Court Rulings

In two victories for animal activists, the Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for the Animal Legal Defense Fund to sue for tighter regulation of zoos and research labs and gave advocates for endangered sea turtles the right to demand less artificial lighting along Florida’s beaches.

In both cases, the wildlife advocates won important procedural victories last year that gave them standing in court to challenge government policies they believe are harmful to animals. Neither case is final, however, and the high court merely rejected appeals Monday that sought to kill the lawsuits.

In 1985, Congress passed the Animal Welfare Act and told federal regulators to ensure the “humane handling, care and treatment of [some] animals” in zoos, circuses and labs. The rules were supposed to require, among other things, that primates live in “an environment adequate to promote [their] psychological well being.”

Animal-rights activists contend the government has failed to enforce these rules. Instead, they say, it relies on the zoos and labs to police themselves.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund, based in Rockville, Md., brought a lawsuit that seeks both revised regulations and tougher enforcement. The plaintiffs were several persons disturbed by what they saw at some zoos.

The crucial first question was who, if anyone, has standing in court to sue the government. In general, courts will hear suits only from persons who were directly injured by the acts of another. In this case, however, the direct victims--the animals--could not speak for themselves in court.

One plaintiff was Marc Jurnove, a retired New York park ranger. He reported on several visits to a private game farm on Long Island and said he was disturbed to see a distressed chimpanzee held alone in an outdoor cage. Bears and monkeys were kept in dirty cages, he added, and other animals were sick. After another visit, he learned the chimpanzee had escaped and had been shot.

Dismissing his accounts as irrelevant, lawyers for the research labs, which use animals for experiments, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the law, said the suit should be thrown out because Jurnove and others had no standing to sue.

However, in September, the full U.S. Court of Appeals here, on a 7-4 vote, ruled Jurnove and the animal-rights group did have standing. The retired park ranger suffered an “aesthetic injury [when] he saw with his own eyes” the miserable conditions for the zoo animals, the court said.

This decision was hailed by the animal-rights movement as a landmark victory because it opened the courthouse door to legal claims brought on behalf of animals.

The National Assn. for Biomedical Research, fearing such action, appealed to the Supreme Court in December. Its lawyers said the ruling, if allowed to stand, would allow activists to “impose their views of animal welfare” not just on zoos but on “many medical research facilities” as well.

On Monday, the justices rejected this appeal without comment and allowed the lawsuit to proceed (National Assn. of Biomedical Research vs. Animal Legal Defense Fund, 98-1059).

Now the case moves back to a three-judge panel to decide the main question of whether federal regulators have failed in their duty to carry out the law.

A lawyer for the labs refused comment Monday on the ground that the case is not over.

Valerie J. Stanley, a lawyer for the animal-rights group, said she was delighted by the high court’s action. “The biomedical industry doesn’t want anyone to have standing under this act to go to court and to challenge what they are doing,” she said. She noted that the law’s provisions also apply to breeders of dogs, cats and rabbits. They do not apply to birds, mice and rats used in most medical research, she added.

Meanwhile, the court also let stand a ruling that forces new restrictions on lighting from homes and cars near Daytona Beach.

Turtles are attracted to bright light and, in the case of newly hatched sea turtles, this leads them to walk away from the moonlit ocean and toward the land.

In 1995, two wildlife advocates sued Volusia County, Fla., under the Endangered Species Act for failing to restrict artificial lighting on the beach. The suit was unusual in that it did not claim the county itself was killing or hurting turtles, but rather that it was permitting others to do so.

The county sought to have the suit dismissed on the grounds that the activists had no standing to sue the local government.

Last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Atlanta sided with the advocates for the turtles.

Lawyers for the county, joined by two property-rights groups, asked the Supreme Court to overturn this decision. But the appeal was turned down Monday in County Council of Volusia vs. Loggerhead Turtles, 98-1137.

On Thursday, the county council will take up a new ordinance that would turn down the lights on the beach. If the ordinance passes, the suit may be settled soon.