The Democratic nominee in Colorado's competitive Eighth Congressional District, Manny Rutinel, joined a panel at the Animal Law Conference, an annual event organized by a group that says animals should be recognized as legal persons and once filed a negligence lawsuit on behalf of an unusual plaintiff: a horse named Justice.
The panel, titled "Navigating Politics to Protect Animals," aimed to provide "an overview of the ways animal advocates can engage with politics and public policy" and took place in October 2024, while Rutinel was a sitting state representative. Just three months later, Rutinel launched his congressional bid for a district that relies heavily on ranching and animal-based farming. It was moderated by Chris Green, the executive director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), one of the two groups that organize the conference.
ALDF has a long history of pushing legal efforts meant to give animals equal rights as humans. In 2018, the group filed a lawsuit in an Oregon court on behalf of an American quarter horse, which was renamed "Justice" ahead of the suit, accusing his original owner of negligence and demanding a $100,000 payout.
A neighbor saw that Justice, at the time named "Shadow," appeared emaciated and persuaded his owner, Gwendolyn Vercher, to take him to a vet, who found the horse was 300 pounds underweight and suffered from lice and frostbite, according to court filings. Justice was sent to a rescue organization, and Vercher pleaded guilty to criminal neglect, agreeing to pay for the horse's care.
Then she reportedly found out through ABC News's daily podcast, Start Here, that Justice was suing her for additional care costs.
The case worked its way up to the Oregon Supreme Court, attracting nearly a dozen amicus briefs along the way. One was cowritten by Rajesh Reddy, the director of the Animal Law Program at Lewis & Clark Law School—the other group that organizes the Animal Law Conference. The school argued that the state's highest court should hear the case to keep U.S. jurisprudence in step with animals' recognition as legal persons in Argentina, Ecuador, and Colombia, the ABA Journal reported.
The Oregon Supreme Court ultimately declined to hear the case in 2023. The ALDF lawyer representing Justice, Matthew Liebman, who also serves as a University of San Francisco School of Law associate professor, said he was "disappointed."
"We saw this case not only as an opportunity to get justice for an individual injured horse but also to put forward the question of who has legal rights, of who is a legal person and who ought to be before the law with the capacity to file a lawsuit," he said.
Rutinel's connection to a group working to recognize the "personhood" of animals comes amid scrutiny over his own years-long animal activism and anti-meat crusade as he vies to unseat Rep. Gabe Evans (R.) in Colorado's Eighth Congressional District, where ranches and other animal-based agriculture generated roughly $1.2 billion in 2022. It also marks the most recent example to date of Rutinel, a former vegan, supporting the cause and is the first reported instance to have occurred while he was serving in the state legislature.
That timeline casts doubt on Rutinel's response to Reddit posts he authored in 2017 aligning with efforts to give animals the same legal rights as humans and prohibit their slaughter. When the Colorado Sun unearthed the posts, he said, "The views that I put in those posts when I was 22 are not my views today. … Those are the views of a 22-year-old kid. I've grown a lot, and I'm glad that I have." In 2022, meanwhile, he wrote an article advocating for meat producers to be paid to transition to plant-based farming and for a "moratorium on the expansion or creation" of large-scale livestock farms.
Rutinel did not respond to a request for comment. He has described himself as a "friend" of ranchers and said he abandoned his vegan lifestyle because "it's important for me to be able to enjoy the delicious products that Colorado ranchers make."
It's unclear what Rutinel said while speaking on the Animal Law Conference Panel. The event's webpage indicates that it would have been live-streamed, yet Rutinel's is the only plenary session missing from its uploaded recordings.
Other available details, however, provide insight into what was discussed. His fellow panelist, Rachel Atcheson, boasts that she helped create "meatless Mondays" and other "plant-forward" policies in New York City public schools while working for former mayor Eric Adams. She also held a wedding celebration at an animal sanctuary for "rescue[d] and rehabilitate[d] farmed animals," where she was photographed cradling a rooster with her new husband, Sean McElwee, the disgraced Democratic messaging guru who took millions from crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and lost his job at the data firm he founded in 2022 amid allegations he was gambling on election outcomes. McElwee, who popularized the "Abolish ICE" mantra in 2017, joined Atcheson as a vegan during their relationship.
As for the panel's moderator, Green spent eight years heading the Harvard University Animal Law & Policy Program before he took over ALDF. During his tenure, the program's faculty director, Kristen Stilt, filed an amicus brief defending an animal rights radical, Wayne Hsiung, who led hundreds of activists on a raid removing chickens and ducks from farms in 2018 and 2019. She argued that the animals should be protected by a law protecting people who act "to prevent a significant bodily harm or evil" inflicted on others.
Materials provided during Rutinel's panel are also revealing. One item was a lawsuit Rutinel helped win while working for the left-wing climate group Earthjustice, forcing the EPA to enforce stricter regulations on slaughterhouses. They also include two pieces of legislation Rutinel sponsored. One created an Office of Environmental Justice and ordered Colorado to conduct an "environmental equity" analysis, while the other tightened rules surrounding greenhouse gas emissions.
Rutinel has called part of the eighth district "one of the country's most polluted regions" as recently as July 2023, a remark that was likely aimed at the district's livestock and oil industries. He has not tweeted the word "pollute" since 2024.
