54 United States The Economist October 30th 2021
Policeandpolitics(2):VaccinemandatesHands up, no shots
J
ohncatanzara, presidentofChicago’s
police union, says he is no antivaxxer.
He got his jabs some time ago. Yet the fiery
union leader, who likes to post long mono
logues on YouTube to rally his troops, in
sists that his vaccination status is none of
the city of Chicago’s business. On October
15th, under a mandate announced in Au
gust by Lori Lightfoot, the mayor, all city
workers were meant to fill in an online
form with their vaccination status. Those
who are not vaccinated have to submit to
twiceweekly testing for covid19, at their
own expense. If they do not supply their
status, they will be put on unpaid leave. Mr
Catanzara calls this “tyranny”.
In August, in an interview with the Chi-
cago Sun-Times, he described it as being the
sort of thing Nazi Germany would have im
posed, comparing getting a vaccine to be
ing told to shower in Auschwitz. He apolo
gised for those remarks, but he has kept up
the basic thrust, saying on October 25th
that Chicago is “literally a dictatorship”, for
forcing city workers to get vaccinated.
Worried that he has, in effect, been encour
aging the police to strike—which would be
illegal—a judge ordered him to shut up. He
only barely complied. By the deadline
4,500 officers, almost a third of Chicago’s
police force, had not provided their vacci
nation status. A few dozen have been put
on unpaid leave. Yet their refusal to coop
erate is about more than just vaccines. It
reflects police anger more broadly with lib
eral city governments.
In New York on October 25th, the largest
police union also sued to oppose a vaccine
mandate there, which comes into effect on
November 1st. In Los Angeles Alex Villa
nueva, the county sheriff, said on October
7th that he will refuse to enforce a vaccine
mandate imposed by Los Angeles County.
Portland, Oregon, and Seattle are also fac
ing police revolts. By contrast Florida’s Re
publican governor, Ron DeSantis, a vocal
supporter of vaccine holdouts, this week
promised a $5,000 signup bonus to those
who move to his state rather than accept
their jabs. “If you’re not being treated well,
we will treat you better here,” he said.
Mr Catanzara, like many police officers,
insists his objections are about collective
bargaining agreements, not vaccines
themselves. The police are not alone. In
New York hundreds of municipal workers
marched across Brooklyn Bridge on Octo
ber 25th to protest against the mandatethere. In Illinois a few teachers have re
signed rather than get jabbed. But the po
lice seem especially irked. This may reflect
officers’ politics. Last year the national Fra
ternal Order of Police endorsed Donald
Trump. City leaders, by contrast, tend to be
on the left of the Democratic Party. Ms
Lightfoot has been an enthusiastic propo
nent of Chicago’s consent decree, through
which the federal government monitors its
police force. Bill de Blasio, the mayor of
New York, has curbed stopandsearch and
is unpopular in the nypd.
So far, vaccine mandates have largely
survived legal challenges. Politics is a big
ger risk. On October 25th, at an emergencymeeting, Mr Catanzara demanded that
Chicago’s aldermen, or councillors, put
their hands up to vote for a resolution to
take the power to impose these rules away
from the mayor. To those that didn’t, he
threatened: “We are coming for every one
of your damned seats.” In Los Angeles Mr
Villanueva has suggested that cops will
quit rather than be forced to get jabbed.
Such threats may not come to much.
But murder rates are rising again in many
American cities, and police officers are in
demand. Ms Lightfoot has already watered
down her original proposal (initially,get
ting tested was not an option). It isa risky
business, upsetting the boys in blue.nC HICAGO
Cops hate vaccine mandates—and the
city leaders imposing themC
orporations haveenjoyedlegal
personhood since the 19th century.
Now, it seems, they have company. A
dispute over the fate of hippos in Colom
bia has given rise to a federal court ruling
in Ohio that, for the first time in Amer
ican law, recognises animals as people.
This should come as welcome news to
the 100plus hippos of Colombia’s Mag
dalena river. They are the offspring of
four hippos smuggled into the country
by Pablo Escobar, a drug lord. After Esco
bar died in a shootout with police in
1993, other specimens from his exotic
menagerie—ostriches, zebras, flamin
gos—found new homes in zoos. But the
hippos took up residence in the mud of
the Magdalena and got to reproducing.
The surfeit of hippos has coated lakes
with algae and could displace otters,
manatees and endangered turtles. Hip
pos have begun wandering into villages,
too—a potential peril for human per
sons. Last year the government consi
dered a cull, prompting a Colombian
lawyer to take up the cause. The hippos,
his lawsuit says, enjoy protection under
Colombian law and must not be killed.
Judge Karen Litkovitz, the federal
judge in Ohio, does not get to decide the
hippos’ fate. But on October 15th she
agreed with the Animal Legal Defence
Fund that the hippos are “interested
persons” under a law permitting foreign
litigants to gather evidence in America
that may buttress their claims. Experts in
nonsurgical sterilisation will be de
posed for their insights on pzp, a contra
ceptive that could spare the hippos while
dampening their growth.
America is not the first country to
regard animals as legal persons. An
Indian court cited the constitution inbanninga bullfightingfestival in 2014. A
judge in Argentina ruled that Sandra, an
orangutan, was a nonhuman person
eligible for better environs than her
concrete enclosure in a Buenos Aires
zoo; she now luxuriates in a sanctuary in
Florida. In 2020 a court in Islamabad,
faced with cases involving stray dogs, an
elephant and a bear, recognised the
“right of each animal...to live in an envi
ronment that meets the latter’s behav
ioural, social and physiological needs”.
Judge Litkovitz’s decision is not
couched in such sweeping terms. It
remains to be seen whether other Amer
ican courts take her cue in cases such as
that of Happy, an elephant at the Bronx
Zoo who has shown signs of selfaware
ness and misery. In 2022 New York’s
highest court will consider whether the
writ of habeas corpus—protection from
unjust imprisonment—applies to Happy.Narco-hipposWallow on
N EW YORK
Alandmark ruling for animal rightsAhippopotaperson