Statement From PETA re SeaWorld’s New Law Firm to Fight Coastal Commission Is Notoriously Anti–Animal Protection

For Immediate Release:
October 19, 2015

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

PETA Foundation Director of Animal Law Jared Goodman released a statement in response to SeaWorld’s decision to retain the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, in its challenge of the California Coastal Commission’s ban on orca breeding:

In a move that won’t shock people familiar with SeaWorld’s push to keep orcas and dolphins in tanks, PETA has learned that SeaWorld has hired Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, the firm that tried unsuccessfully to undo a popular law in California that bans the importation of kangaroo skins. The law it tried to overturn, which went into effect in 1971, helps prevent kangaroos in Australia from being shot and sometimes, as has been well documented, left to die slow deaths as their babies starve to death in their pouches. PETA expresses no surprise that SeaWorld has chosen a firm that defends animal abusers, not animals.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—has more information about its SeaWorld campaign available here.