Over 70 chimpanzees who have been living almost their entire lives in labs may soon be able to spend their remaining years in a sanctuary. A federal judge ruled in December that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) violated the law when it refused to allow certain chimps to be transferred out of labs and sent to the Chimp Haven sanctuary in Louisiana.

In her decision, U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby states that the NIH’s stance violates the CHIMP Act, passed in 2000. “Congress intended for the federal sanctuary system to provide lifetime care for chimpanzees that are no longer appropriate for research due to advanced age, infections, or similar circumstance,” she wrote. “The CHIMP Act makes clear that Congress recognized that older and sicker chimpanzees…would enter the federal sanctuary system.”

The NIH announced in 2015 that it would no longer fund chimp research and stated that it had “developed a plan for the retirement of all of the NIH-owned and –supported chimpanzees to Chimp Haven.” Since then, more than 200 chimpanzees have been relocated to the sanctuary. However, the NIH announced in 2019 and 2021 that the remaining chimpanzees at the Alamogordo Primate Facility in New Mexico and dozens more chimps at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas would not be relocated to Chimp Haven. The agency claimed that it was for their own good because they were too frail or otherwise unsuited for life in a sanctuary. AAVS and others protested this determination.

After repeated appeals to NIH were disregarded, animal protection organizations finally sued the agency to force it to comply with the law, documenting that older chimps certainly can be moved safely. Next, the judge will review additional information and the parties are expected to reach agreement on a practical plan for relocating the chimps.