A Colorado court rejected efforts to free five elephants using a legal process for human detainees, writing that it “boils down to whether an elephant is a person.”

On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that elephants do not have the same rights as humans after the Nonhuman Rights Project sued the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo over the conditions of its elephants.

Judges ruled a bid to free five elderly African elephants from Cheyenne Mountain Zoo was based on a law that only applied to humans.

A court has rejected the notion that elephants are people, upholding a zoo's right to keep the animals after a yearslong legal scrap.

The Colorado Supreme Court has unanimously sided with the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo (CMZoo) in a lawsuit deemed “frivolous” by the zoo, which was seeking to release the elephants from the zoo and move them to a sanctuary.

The court ruled Tuesday that elephants couldn't be released because animals don't have the same rights as humans. The group that filed the suit said that the animals were experiencing stress, physical issues,

After activists tried to get elephants constitutional rights, they were ruled against when the Colorado Supreme Court determined that elephants are not a person.