MEXICO CITY (appro).- A federal court recognized, for the first time, the existence of a multispecies family by judicially declaring that the dogs of a couple living in Mexico City are members of their family and not their property .
The Eleventh Collegiate Court in Administrative Matters in Mexico City endorsed the proposal of magistrate Paula María García Villegas Sánchez Cordero, to declare that companion animals, such as dogs and cats, can be part of the family, given the new conditions social and cultural in Mexico and the world.
“The current reality is that domestic animals have become in some family bosoms, part of the family members. They play a role of protection, support, companionship, affection and care towards humans,” the court said.
The magistrates explained that the reciprocal attachment relationship between people and domestic animals, in multispecies families, is clear since they are treated as part of the family.
In the amparo, a woman named Bertha Alicia Romero argued that she has a multispecies family in her dog shelter, which she has installed in her own home.
“They are, in a few words, members of it, hence the denomination of multispecies or interspecies family. This social context implies that there are commercial lines of shelter and animal care,” added the Collegiate.
In addition, the magistrates indicated that the Constitution of Mexico City establishes a particular protection of animals because they are considered sentient beings, subjects of protection in their dignity.
The litigation derived from a resolution of the Administrative Verification Institute (INVEA), in which it determined that Romero’s house could not be used as a shelter for dogs with aesthetic and training services because it did not have the use of land for it.
This led Romero to process the amparo in which the Collegiate concluded that the commercial business of sheltering and caring for animals obeys a social demand for the new multi-species integration of families.
