“The only reasonable interpretation of the 13th Amendment’s plain language is that it applies to persons, and not to non-persons such as orcas,” U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller wrote in his ruling.

“Both historic and contemporary sources reveal that the term ‘slavery’ and ‘involuntary servitude’ refer only to persons,” the judge added…

David Steinberg, a professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, told Reuters when the lawsuit was filed in October that it was “demeaning (to) the integrity and humanity of people who were owned as slaves.”…

In 2003, the Anti-Defamation League accused PETA of trivializing the deaths of Jews in World War Two with a campaign that compared the meat industry to the Holocaust.