Justice, the horse that animal activists wanted to be able to sue its former owner for support.

The news flash from the Oregon Court of Appeals is that horses aren’t people and can’t file a lawsuit.

The judges ruled that a horse named Justice is, all things considered, a horse and, as such, has no standing in a court of law.

The folks behind the publicity stunt, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, say the abused horse deserved the right to go to court to seek damages for its upkeep.

The court said, “Nay.” Or should we say, “Neigh”?

Undeterred, the activists are heading to the state Supreme Court to obtain for Justice its day in court.

This will generate more publicity for the group even if it doesn’t help the horse.

These abuses of the legal system are great for coffee shop talk, where the concept of animals going to court to sue their owners, or farmers and ranchers, will generate a certain amount of buzz.

But beyond the publicity, another goal is to obtain for animals a right reserved by law and the Constitution for humans.

It’s not as though the welfare of animals is ignored by the law. Owners who mistreat their animals will ultimately find themselves before a judge, not because of the Animal Legal Defense Fund and its publicity hounds but because local and state laws forbid it.

Further, if found guilty, those owners will find themselves the recipient of an appropriate sentence meted out by a judge.

That is how the U.S. legal system operates. To argue that horses — or cows or raccoons — can go to court is futile. If the animal activists wanted to help a horse or other animal that had been mistreated, they could take the money they spent on this silly lawsuit and put it toward the animal’s care.

This is not the first time animal activists have tried to convince a judge to buy into their animal-as-a-human argument. 

Earlier this year, the Nonhuman Rights Project went to court in New York arguing that Happy the elephant was “enslaved” by the Brooklyn Zoo. The group filed a writ of habeas corpus in an effort to remove Happy from the zoo.

Previously, another New York group had tried a similar tactic on behalf of a chimpanzee.

The wildest swing, however, was 11 years ago, when the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals tried to talk a judge into granting personhood to a killer whale.

It is fortunate for all of us and our sanity that such shenanigans have come up short.

And think about this. If an animal can be abused and seek restitution, it could also abuse another animal or human. Would a human who was attacked by a horse be able to sue that horse? Or could a cat sue another cat after it was hurt in a fight?

Don’t laugh. These are the crazy-making questions that fly out of such legal arguments. 

Granting an animal “rights” would rob humans of their constitutional rights. How can you cross-examine a horse or a killer whale on the witness stand? Very carefully, we assume.

By any line of reasoning, legal or otherwise, a horse is a horse, and a human is a human.

Of course.