‘Tilikum v. SeaWorld’ Case Summary
Case Name: Tilikum, et al., by and through their Next Friends, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc., et al. v. SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc., et al.
Index Number: 11-cv-2476
Court: U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California
In October 2011, PETA Foundation lawyers filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California on behalf of five wild-caught orcas of the Southern Resident Community against SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment Inc. and SeaWorld LLC. The lawsuit sought a declaration that these orcas—Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka, and Ulises—were held by the defendants as slaves in violation of Section 1 of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which prohibits slavery and involuntary servitude. PETA participated in the lawsuit as one of a number of “next friends” to the orcas and was joined by the following:
- Richard O’Barry, recipient of an Environmental Achievement Award from the U.S. Committee for the United Nations Environmental Program in recognition of his work as founder of the Dolphin Project and several decades of advocacy for the release of captive cetaceans
- Dr. Ingrid Visser, one of the world’s leading orca experts, famous for, among other achievements, preparing the orca Keiko (known from the movie Free Willy) for reintroduction into the wild
- Howard Garrett, a published expert on cetaceans and founder of the Orca Network—which, among other projects, has worked to encourage awareness and knowledge of the Southern Resident Community
- Samantha Berg, a former orca trainer at SeaWorld Orlando in Florida who had interacted directly with Tilikum and Katina
- Carol Ray, another former orca trainer at SeaWorld Orlando who had interacted directly with Katina and her offspring
The lawsuit sought an injunction that would free the orcas from SeaWorld’s bondage and place them in a habitat suited to their individual needs and best interests.
Plaintiff Orcas’ Bondage
Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka, and Ulises were forcibly taken from their families and natural habitats and eventually held captive at SeaWorld San Diego and SeaWorld Orlando, denied everything that’s natural and important to them, subjected to artificial insemination or sperm collection to breed performers for defendants’ shows, and forced to perform constantly—all just for SeaWorld’s profit.
Tilikum, for example, was taken from his home and family as a 2-year-old off the coast of Iceland in 1983. He was first sold to a facility in British Columbia, where he shared a metal-sided tank that was only 26 feet in diameter and 20 feet deep with two other orcas. SeaWorld’s predecessors purchased him in 1992, rejecting efforts to free him. The lawsuit described how, at SeaWorld Orlando, Tilikum was confined to barren concrete tanks with an average approximate size of 86 feet by 51 feet—the equivalent of a 6-foot-tall man living on half a volleyball court. Other orca tanks at SeaWorld were even smaller.
As explained by the lawsuit, the orca plaintiffs’ captivity was particularly cruel torture. In nature, orcas have their own culture and engage in many sophisticated types of social, communicative, and cognitive behavior. They hunt together and share food as a trust-building exercise. Communities of orcas even have their own dialects, passed between family and pod members. Orcas experience complex emotions and other mental states, including guilt, empathy, embarrassment, social cognition, self-awareness, and self-recognition.
But at SeaWorld, the orca plaintiffs lived in concrete tanks. The effect of this captivity on them is well understood—whereas in the wild, there are nonagenarian orcas, their average life expectancy in captivity is approximately 8.5 years. The orcas displayed apparent physiological and behavioral abnormalities as a result, including repetitive movements such as swimming in circles, unresponsiveness, excessive submissiveness, hypersexual behavior toward humans or other orcas, self-inflicted physical trauma and mutilation, vomiting, aggression, and suppressed immune systems.
For example, the lawsuit explained that Tilikum was physically injured both intentionally and unintentionally by other orcas and displayed many types of abnormal behavior—including a high-profile incident in which he drowned a trainer. At the time of the lawsuit, Tilikum no longer had teeth in his bottom jaw and, after the incident involving the trainer, was placed in complete isolation.
PETA and the other next friends urged the district court to find that the orcas’ plight constituted slavery in violation of the 13th Amendment, which, although enacted in the historical context of African American chattel slavery, contains broad self-executing provisions banning chattel slavery and involuntary servitude within the U.S., without limitation as to who can suffer from enslavement.
The Court’s Decision
In February 2012, the district court ruled against the orcas, dismissing the lawsuit. The crux of the court’s reasoning was that, unlike challenges under the 14th Amendment’s due process or equal protection clauses or the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishment clause, the 13th Amendment is not subject to an expansive interpretation because, in the court’s view, it “targets a single issue: the abolition of slavery within the United States.”
This reasoning did not engage with allegations that the orcas are enslaved by SeaWorld or the argument that denying them relief from their enslavement constitutes a speciesist limitation of the amendment that finds no support in the text.
The court’s decision did, however, leave the door open for further challenges on behalf of animals. The opinion recognized that “[a]nimals have many legal rights, protected under both federal and state laws.” The court ended its opinion by observing that “[e]ven though Plaintiffs lack standing to bring a Thirteenth Amendment claim, that is not to say that animals have no legal rights.” The opinion anticipated the possibility that other constitutional amendments and “fundamental constitutional concepts” may extend to animals.
Raising Awareness
The lawsuit sparked a wave of awareness of the orcas’ plight and the enslavement of orcas and other animals in the U.S., as well as demonstrating how core legal rights can be marshaled in defense of animals. Media from around the world took note of the case, with meaningful coverage from CNN, NBC, the BBC, The Atlantic, the Daily Mail, and local outlets—including in SeaWorld’s Florida and California backyards—among many others.
The case has also inspired law students and has been cited in many dozens of law review articles. These range widely, including scholarship considering potential applications of the 13th Amendment—see, e.g., Jamal Greene, “Thirteenth Amendment Optimism,” 112 Colum. L. Rev. 1733 (2012) and even arguments for the constitutional rights of artificial intelligence, such as R. George Wright, “The Constitutional Rights of Advanced Robots (and of Human Beings),” 71 Ark. L. Rev. 613, 646 (2019).
