“Sometimes You Can Lose the Battle and Still Win The War”: Katherine Meyer’s Fight for Justice for Animals

Katherine Meyer (photo by Eric Glitzenstein)

Katherine Meyer is a leading figure in the field of animal law and a founding partner at Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks, a law firm based in Washington, D.C. She has spent a large percentage of her professional life fighting to make the world a better place for animals and to protect the environment, and I was eager to meet her and interview her for the Unbound Project. Earlier this year I was in Washington for a conference and Meyer graciously agreed to meet me while I was in town. While I was looking forward to chatting with her about her ground-breaking work in the field of animal law, I was somewhat intimidated to meet her in person – what would she be like?, I wondered. We had arranged to meet in a vegan-friendly coffee shop near my hotel. “I’ll be wearing pink rain boots,” she told me as we arranged our meeting. That detail made me relax a bit – Meyer may be a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, but she also clearly had a playful side.

I need not have worried about meeting Meyer. She greeted me with a hug and warm smile, and we spent the next hour drinking soy lattes and talking about the many ways that the law can be an important avenue for animal protection. I learned, for example, about how it isn’t always necessary to create new laws to fight animal cruelty. Meyer is especially skilled at taking existing laws and figuring out how they can be used to creatively advocate for the protection of animals. As she pointed out, “we try to use existing laws to protect animals to the greatest extent possible.”

For example, Meyer’s firm figured out that they could use the existing Endangered Species Act in the United States as a way to help captive animals. Previously there had existed a loophole that exempted members of an endangered species who were in captivity—chimpanzees in zoos, for example, wouldn’t have been granted the same legal protections as chimpanzees in the wild. Meyer and her team petitioned the United States Fish & Wildlife Service to amend the existing law so that all members of an endangered species were treated the same way. This was a multi-year effort and they drew upon the knowledge and expertise of a coalition of chimpanzee experts to help build a rock-solid scientific and legal basis for their claims. In February 2010 the petition was submitted, and in 2015 the Fish & Wildlife Service granted the petition which declared that all chimpanzees are endangered and, as such, are to be protected under the Endangered Species Act.

Knuckles, a chimpanzee rescued by the Centre for Great Apes.

At times the existing laws that Meyer and her team work with have been on the books for many decades as some state animal cruelty codes date as far back as the 19th century. While some might not see historical legislation as having much relevance in our contemporary society, Meyer finds creative ways to use these long-standing codes to help make a difference for animals today. In fact, she used this tactic with one of the first animal law cases she was involved with, an effort to shut down an annual pigeon shoot in a small rural Pennsylvania town. This was an event in which thousands of pigeons who had been captured throughout the year were released and then shot by those participating in the event. Most of the birds were not instantly killed by the gunshots, rather they were mortally wounded and lay on the ground suffering and slowly dying for hours. Meyer and her team learned that at the end of the event little “trapper boys” went out in the fields to pick up the wounded animals. They got one of the leading pediatric psychologists in the nation to support their efforts to shut down the event by providing a statement about how this kind of activity was not good for a child’s well-being.

It was, however, the state cruelty code in Pennsylvania turned out to be the most important part of the fight to stop this annual pigeon shoot. This piece of legislation was written in the 19th century and it had a unique provision that permitted an agent of a humane society to get involved in order to “prevent an action.” In most states the cruelty codes only permit involvement by animal advocacy groups after the fact, so this was an important feature of the legal landscape in Pennsylvania and one that helped Meyer and her team strategize about how best to stop this event. They eventually partnered with the Pennsylvania SPCA, local humane agents, and the Fund for Animals in order to introduce a series of lawsuits to try and stop the pigeon shoot.

This was an uphill battle as the pigeon shoot had been happening for years and was a much-loved community event. When the case first went to court the presiding judge declared it as “frivolous” and threatened to sanction Meyer for bringing it forward. She was undeterred and took the case to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court where she was given a unanimous ruling in her favor. This was a monumental win—for many years animal rights activists had been trying unsuccessfully to stop this pigeon hunt, but Meyer and her team succeeded because they knew how to use statutes and apply existing law to the situation. They conducted extensive research in preparation for the case, including gathering data on the number of birds who were wounded instead of killed outright during the event. This allowed them to draw on existing case law specific to the treatment of wounded animals. In this case and in all subsequent animal law cases Meyer has worked on, she insists that her team take the time to plot out a strategy that involves “moving the law in the direction you need it to move.”

At this point in our conversation, Meyer stopped to stress that “sometimes you can lose the battle and win the war.” What she meant here is that often she knows that the cases she takes on will be difficult to win, but she takes them on anyhow in the hopes that the public education that inevitably occurs as a result of such cases will help change broader conversations about how animals should be treated in our contemporary society.

One such example was when Meyer brought a case against Feld Entertainment in an attempt to get Asian elephants removed from the Ringling Brothers circus acts. This became a massive lawsuit that played out over many years. There were many “highs and lows” throughout the process. Many of the world’s leading elephant experts became part of the team (most of whom worked pro bono), and the case eventually got to trial. Meyer was proud of the effort that this team put together—she called it a “great case”—but, in the end, the judge ruled against them on “standing” —he held that none of the plaintiffs in the case had enough of a “personal” stake in the outcome to provide the court with subject matter jurisdiction. As a consequence, the judge did not decide the merits of the plaintiffs’ claims, including whether the use of bullhooks and chaining of the animals violated the Endangered Species Act. This was a “heartbreaking” loss for Meyer, one that was compounded by the fact that Feld Entertainment brought retaliatory action against Meyer and her team.

However, all was not lost. This lawsuit drew sustained attention to the systematic abuse of animals in circus acts. The facts of the case and particularly the evidence adduced at the six-week trial held in the case were presented through major media outlets, including previously hidden details drawn from internal documents. The testimony in which employees admitted that elephants were beaten with bullhooks was particularly damning and served as an important catalyst for larger conversations. The attention this case received in the media led to widespread concern about the treatment of elephants in circus acts which, in turn, ushered in a number of instances of individual jurisdictions banning the use of bullhooks and paying closer attention to the ways in which animals were treated in these kinds of ventures.

Feld Entertainment recently announced that, after 150 years of the elephants being the symbol of the circus, it was “retiring” all elephants from their circus performances, which it just did in May 2016. During the legal battles representatives from Feld Entertainment testified that a circus could not exist without elephants, but they have since changed their tune. This is, no doubt, in large part to the increased public awareness about the treatment of elephants in circus acts as a result of the case that Meyer brought forward. Of this shift she remarked that “we may have technically lost the case, but it was worth it in the end. There will be no more baby elephants forced to endure the training and grueling treatment needed to make these wild animals perform ‘tricks’ in a circus. Now we need to get the elephants taken out of the circus to legitimate sanctuaries.”

An elephant performing in a circus act.

When Meyer first started practicing law, “animal law” as we now know it did not exist. She began her professional career doing advocacy work for humans, and it was in this capacity that she learned how to think strategically about the law. She has always loved animals and has long felt a deep emotional connection with them. She fondly recalls the many cats and dogs who shared her home as she was growing up, including a Boxer named April who had a special place in her heart. She also remembers how uncomfortable she felt during class trips to the zoo—instead of enjoying herself, she left feeling sad. Thanks to the developments in the field of animal law in recent years, she is now able to combine that love of animals with her professional work.

In 1993 Meyer and her husband (Eric Glitzenstein) started their own firm which focused on environmental law and wildlife protection. Before too long before animal rights organizations began to contact Meyer & Glitzenstein (now Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks) to seek assistance with prosecuting perpetrators of animal cruelty, including federal and state agencies that were taking actions adverse to wildlife. These organizations who had contacted Meyer & Glitzenstein for help had rarely dealt with this form of animal advocacy before, but, as Meyer recalls, “these were people with good ideas and urgent matters.” Meyer and Glitzenstein worked with these organizations to figure out which legal strategies would make the most sense in each individual case. At times these strategies were successful and resulted in a victory in court, but often this was not the case. However, even when they did not win in court, Meyer always felt like progress had been made—“even just pursuing a meritorious case is useful as it furthers education on the topic. The more this happens, the more the public learns, and the more it becomes politically incorrect to mistreat animals and ignore the needs of wildlife.”

Dr. Theodora Capaldo, the President and Executive Director of the New England Anti-Vivisection Society deeply admires Meyer’s work and describes her as someone who “will not back down from hard cases.” Capaldo especially praises Meyer’s ability to “find a way through complex scenarios.”

Meyer works hard and has incredibly high standards, something she and Mr. Glitzenstein demand from the entire team at Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks. When the firm decides to bring a case forward it will always have been meticulously thought-out and planned. “We try not to let a brief go out the door with so much as a typo in it,” Meyer stresses, “we are up against the federal government and extremely prestigious corporate law firms, and our work needs to be of the highest caliber for us to have any chance of being successful in court.” Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks has developed a reputation as a firm that doesn’t “make idle threats about bringing law suits to vindicate the rights of animals,” and their opponents take them seriously in court. This has been incredibly important as the fields of environmental and animal law developed. As is often the case with emerging areas of knowledge, initially there were many who were skeptical about the legitimacy of these areas of practice, so Meyer knew just how crucial it was to always demonstrate their diligence and professionalism, to force people to take these cases as seriously as they would in any other sub-field of the law.

While many of the cases that Meyer has been involved in have been instrumental in shifting both policy and popular perception when it comes to the treatment of animals, she is quick to point out that successful advocacy happens on a number of different levels. “Every single part of advocacy counts,” she stresses, “it all adds up to public education, and public education is the most important element. It is the only way that things will change.” She points to films like Blackfish and The Cove as important aspects of animal advocacy because they reach a broad audience. She also sees humane education as being a very important avenue through which to continue to make the world a better place for animals–“teachers are so important, and kids have a natural inclination to love animals.”

Meyer also feels that it is important for animal rights groups and environmental groups to find more common ground. In many of her cases she ends up working with both environmental and animal organizations as co-plaintiffs, and because of this is keenly aware of how important it is to bridge the gaps that can exist between these two forms of advocacy work. She acknowledges that this is not always easy, but that it is an incredibly important goal. She sees “habitat protection as an animal rights issue” and, likewise, feels that environmental groups need to “understand that protecting wildlife is protecting the ecosystem. It isn’t just about protecting the land, but also about protecting the animals who live there.”

Meyer is now a leading figure in animal law, and has served as a mentor for many law clerks, interns, and associates who have worked with her. She finds it very rewarding to see so many of the people she has mentored branching out and finding success in this field, including some that she has nominated to be featured in the Unbound Project. For example, she points to Delcianna Winders the first fellow in animal law at Harvard Law School, and someone that Meyer refers to as a “wonderful, smart, and courageous lawyer.” She also was quick to praise the work of Amy Atwood and Tanya Sanerib who are both attorneys for the Centre for Biological Diversity, an organization that Meyer describes as “one of the most aggressive, effective, environmental groups in the country.” Meyer has been especially impressed by Atwood and Sanerib’s “amazing energy, intelligence and work ethic.” She also has high praise for the firm’s former associate, Michelle Sinnott, who served as the paralegal for the Ringling Brothers trial and is now an attorney with the prestigious environmental group Trustees for Alaska.

Meyer’s advice for young people who want to help make a difference for animals is to “follow your passion, and to be bold about following your passion.” Meyer Glitzenstein & Eubanks receives many resumes each year, and what Meyer looks for as she reads through these documents is evidence of applicants who clearly demonstrate commitment to the causes they most care about. For Meyer, things like grades are far less important than volunteer work and involvement with grassroots issues and campaigns.

Katherine Meyer with Parker, her grand-dog. (photo by Eric Glitzenstein)

One of the most important guiding principles in Meyer’s professional and personal life is “one step at a time.” Every case is treated like a new opportunity to continue to chip away at the systemic and deeply entrenched ways that animals are abused and exploited in our contemporary world. At the same time, however, Meyer has a lot of institutional knowledge and frequently remembers “the genesis of many of these issues in animal law as well as how it evolved.” In the more than 27 years since she has been practicing animal law she has learned so much, and each of her cases is helping to reform dominant ideas about how animals should be treated. Her work has helped countless animals and we truly admire the tenacity and fortitude she brings to each and every one of her cases.

“Find Something You Care About Deeply, And Do Everything You Can For It”: Avalon Theisen’s Mission to Change the World

Avalon Theisen is the founder of Conserve It Forward, an environmental education organization based in Florida. She was recently in Paris for the COP 21 conference on climate change, has visited the White House to speak about environmental issues, given a TEDx Talk, and has won several awards for her work, including the Florida Achievement Award from the Florida Commission on the Status of Women in 2014. Theisen is a vegan who is passionate about educating people about the connection between environmental issues and animal rights. She is a volunteer for Vegan Outreach and, as part of her outreach and advocacy work, she is also developing an app for smartphones that will help people plan plant-based meals. Oh, and did we mention that Theisen is just 15 years old? We are in awe of her energy and passion for making a difference!

Theisen is home-schooled and this has provided her with many unique learning opportunities. She has a strong connection with nature, and a lot of her education takes place outdoors. As a result, Theisen knows a considerable amount about the flora and fauna of her home state of Florida. For example, the photo shoot for this feature story took place at Park Lake in Tampa Bay, and during that meeting Theisen demonstrated both her comfort with and her exceptional knowledge of the local ecosystem, stopping to provide interesting tidbits of information about the plants and animals we encountered—“Spanish moss is neither Spanish, nor moss,” she was quick to point out. While engaged in the conversation, she would also frequently crouch down to point out and admire native mosses growing amidst the ground cover, or look skyward to listen intently to the calls of local birds.

Much of Theisen’s learning is also done “on the road,” as she travels frequently with her family. These trips are planned around opportunities for service and education, and in the coming months she will be visiting Aruba, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Japan. In addition to furthering her learning, Theisen is dedicated to ensuring that she is helping out in local communities when she travels—“I clocked about 370 hours of service in 2014,” she proudly announces.

Avalon Theisen founded Conserve It Forward when she was only 9 years old.

Theisen is very motivated and much of her work is self-guided. “She does a lot of self-teaching. Avalon has just asked for six new psychology books,” her mom Deborah quips with a smile. Theisen added, from the back seat of the car while we drove through the Lake Park that morning, “I have a passion for linguistics. I love Japanese culture and I’ve just started learning the language. I know a bit of Latin as well.” She recently read Change of Heart by Nick Cooney and has since developed a strong interest in psychology, specifically social psychology and how this can assist advocacy groups in becoming more effective at conveying their messages.

Theisen is an avid artist, and creates “Zentangles” as part of her education and outreach efforts. Each of these paintings has information about wildlife and conservation on the back and the overall piece is designed to be multi-purpose – it can be used as stationary or framed as a piece of artwork.

Theisen was recently named Humane Student of the Year by Animalearn, a well-deserved honour. This is one of several awards that Theisen has received in recent years, but this one holds special significance as she greatly admires the humane education work that Animalearn does and, in fact, has nominated the Director of this organization, Nicole Green, to be featured in the Unbound Project. (Theisen also nominated Kerryn Vaughan, author of, Magnificent Kids, a book celebrating the activism and engagement of many young people, including Theisen.)

Avalon Theisen with her mom, Deborah

Many who have worked with Theisen have remarked on her incredible focus and drive to make the world a better place. She doesn’t seek out the spotlight, but she has an incredible confidence when it comes to speaking about her work. She is hopeful and sees that things are starting to change in important ways. For example, while she was in Paris for the COP21 climate change conference, she noted that “it was incredible how many ordinary people at the event spoke specifically about how our food choices are affecting the natural world, and how starting to eat plant based can dramatically reduce our carbon footprint.” This connection between the food we consume and the state of the environment is one that continues to drive Theisen’s work. She feels that this is an important topic because it is one that is relevant to everybody—as she points out, “we have the chance to make change every time we eat, and fortunately, most of us have several opportunities to do this each day.”

Theisen’s work is so impressive that it is easy to forget that she is a teenager. However, when you talk with her, there are moments that you are quickly reminded of her youthful enthusiasm. For example, she lights up when remembering the elegant opulence of the White House, a location she visited as part of a delegation of youth participating in a discussion on climate change in 2015.

When asked what advice she has for young people who want to help make a difference in the world, Theisen had this advice:

Find something you care about deeply, and do everything you can for it. Encourage others to do small acts so that we can all help. In this way, all of our small roles add up to making big change for the world as a whole.

She is certainly living by these words and is an inspiration to so many!

The “Jane Goodall of Snakes”

Melissa Amarello with Cash

Snakes are among the most maligned of all animals. For centuries they have been vilified and have stood as symbols of evil and vice in many cultures. They have repeatedly been relegated to the role of villain in countless fairy tales, fables, and works of art, and this has translated in to fear of and violence towards these animals. Even among those who declare themselves to be “animal lovers,” snakes tend to be overlooked and forgotten in the push to protect and defend other species. Melissa Amarello wants to change this. She is the co-founder and Director of Education of a group called Advocates for Snake Preservation (ASP), and in this role she works hard to challenge negative ideas about these animals in the hopes that people will start to think differently about snakes.

Amarello knows that this is an uphill battle, but she has learned that there are some effective ways to counter misconceptions about these animals. Due to the physical appearance of snakes, many people feel they cannot relate to them and, therefore, do not recognize the complex social lives and unique personalities that these animals have. In response to this ASP has developed a strategy in which photos and videos highlighting things like friendships among snakes are shared through social media channels. Amarello emphasizes the way that these tools can help to change attitudes towards snakes:

We focus on individual snakes, give them names, and tell their stories using photos and videos to illustrate snake behaviors that people find appealing and know little about (social behavior, parental care). Names and stories are powerful weapons in fostering compassion and understanding — it’s amazing how people’s perception immediately changes when an animal has a name.

Stories about how snakes form social bonds and how they sometimes do things like “babysit” the offspring of another snake are reinforced through videos taken by a camera that is operated remotely so as to not disturb the animals. Amarello points out that “snakes get a ton of bad press, so countering that with positive information is very helpful.” She encourages supporters of ASP’s work to share the stories and videos they post and to help tell positive stories about these animals—“people often trust information from their friends more than an expert. Never doubt the power of individual voices speaking up and out!” These stories also help to further the scientific information that exists about snakes, as few researchers have paid attention to these aspects of snake behavior.

Amarello first began working with snakes as an undergraduate student; as a graduate student she did behavioral studies on rattlesnakes as part of her academic research. During her graduate studies she had been working closely with nine snakes, and academic procedure and protocol dictated that she was supposed to euthanize them at the end of the study. Amarello realized that these animals did not deserve to die simply because she had completed her degree and instead ended up relocating them to venues where they would be used for education, including four she keeps in her home. She had been planning to continue her studies at the doctoral level, but had an epiphany, realizing that “snakes needed an advocate, not another scientist.” It was at that time when she founded her first advocacy organization, a group called Social Snakes.

Social Snakes has now transformed in to ASP, an organization she runs with her partner, Jeff. In addition to videos and stories shared on social media, ASP also publishes what they have discovered about the behavior of snakes in a wide range of venues, including peer-reviewed scientific journals. This work is helping to change the conversation about the social, emotional, and intellectual lives of snakes.

Amarello has always been interested in animals and recalls that right from when she was young she “wanted to be the Jane Goodall of snakes.” She points to how Goodall’s ideas and research methods were initially dismissed as being unscientific because they didn’t follow standard research methods, and how she wasn’t taken seriously at first in the male-dominated field of science because of her gender. However, as Amarello points out, Goodall “refused to change her methods to meet ‘scientific norms,’ and, as a result, discovered some pretty amazing things about chimpanzee behavior.” This has greatly inspired Amarello in the way she approaches her own research and advocacy work.

Amarello has great respect for those who do investigative work to help stop animal cruelty (including the Unbound Project’s own Jo-Anne McArthur with whom she has worked closely). She draws strength and inspiration from those who do this work—“to see what they see and keep going instead of drowning in despair” makes them heroes in Amarello’s eyes. She is also greatly inspired by many in her own local community (Tucson, AZ) who are working to make a difference for animals, and specifically pointed to the work of Jessica Shuman of Tucson CARES and Alecs Havardr of Tucson Feral Trap Neuter Return who have both “devoted to their lives to animals and do amazing work.”

Amarello and the ASP face many challenges in their mission to change the way that people think about snakes. In early March they will be launching their first major campaign, a campaign which aims to reform “rattlesnake roundups.” This is an expensive undertaking, the first of its kind for this volunteer-run, non-profit organization. For more information on how you can help support this work, please visit the campaign website.