Colorado’s top court has ruled against an effort to have five elephants at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo legally declared people. The Nonhuman Rights Project filed a habeas corpus petition on behalf of Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo, seeking to have them protected from what the group believes is unlawful imprisonment, the Denver Post reports. The court ruled that while elephants are majestic and intelligent animals, they’re still not people and don’t have the right to challenge their detention. The Nonhuman Rights Project was aiming to have the five released to an elephant sanctuary.

The decision “does not turn on our regard for these majestic animals,” the Colorado Supreme Court said, per the AP. “Instead, the legal question here boils down to whether an elephant is a person,” the court said. “And because an elephant is not a person, the elephants here do not have standing to bring a habeas corpus claim.” In June, a lower court ruled that habeas corpus doesn’t apply to nonhumans, “no matter how cognitively, psychologically or socially sophisticated they may be.”

The Nonhuman Rights Project, which has filed eight similar lawsuits in different states without winning a case, said the decision “perpetuates a clear injustice.” The zoo called the group’s lawsuit frivolous and said it had “wasted valuable time and money responding to them in courts and in the court of public opinion,” KOAA reports. “It seems their real goal is to manipulate people into donating to their cause by incessantly publicizing sensational court cases with relentless calls for supporters to donate,” the zoo said. The zoo said a “strenuous review” of its elephant care program didn’t find even minor concerns. (More elephant stories.)