A group called “The Alliance to End Chickens as Koporos” is taking its case against New York City to the state Court of Appeals, The Times Union reported.

The group sued the city as well as its police and health departments, calling the tradition ‘cruel, unsanitary and in violation of 15 known laws.’ They want the Court of Appeals to overturn two lower court rulings and issue a writ of mandamus, in which a court orders a municipality to take action required by law.

In court papers, the alliance said 60,000 chickens are trucked into residential neighborhoods in Brooklyn for the three-day event. The advocates say the birds are “stacked in crates and left on the street for days, without food or water, in the elements, waiting for their death, as they will be sacrificed in the ritual.”

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The advocates say makeshift slaughterhouses are erected in the streets. They say Kaporos leaves dead chickens, blood, feathers, toxins, bird waste and an unbearable stench.

“All citizens must obey the law, regardless of religious belief,” Nora Constance Marino, the Long Island-based attorney for the group, said in a brief. “Should that not be the case, then men practicing Sharia Law could stone women to death, and Mormons could have multiple wives, in the name of ‘religious freedom.’ Existing laws cannot be violated in the name of religion; rather, laws can be deemed unconstitutional if they infringe upon one’s religious beliefs or if they ‘target’ a religious sect.”

[Animal Rights Activists Protest Boro Park Kapparos Center – Break Fence; NYPD Responds [VIDEO & PHOTOS]

In turn, Elina Druker, an assistant corporation counsel for New York City, said in a brief that longstanding precedent shows the group should not dictate how the city carries out its policies.

“Individual citizens cannot dictate how a city of 8.5 million diverse people sets its enforcement priorities, assesses whether laws have been violated, and allocates its limited resources,” Druker stated. “So, to give a few examples, citizens cannot sue to force officials to cite every jaywalker, arrest suspected adulterers, or arrest people with small quantities of marijuana. Nor may appellants obtain an order compelling the city to arrest or fine people of faith for participating in a once-a-year religious ritual that’s alleged to be unlawful.”

She argued the advocates’ intentions would lead to the absurd.

“Police would be compelled to arrest every person who sets a mousetrap, swats a mosquito, or hunts or fishes for sport, and only the criminal jury could assess whether those acts injuring or killing animals were justifiable,” Druker wrote. “Fortunately, the statute does not enact this rigid vision: police have discretion to determine at the outset whether a particular act is ‘unjustifiable.'”

A state Supreme Court judge in Manhattan and the Appellate Division of state Supreme Court’s First Department in Manhattan sided with the city, the latter in a 3-2 decision.

SOURCE: TIMES UNION.