Featured in Microjuris: When Protecting Animals Is Treated as a Violation

In a column published in Microjuris al Día on July 2, 2026, Attorney Yolanda Álvarez examines a type of decision that keeps recurring in Puerto Rico: administrative and court orders that prohibit feeding community cat colonies.

Her argument is legal before it is sentimental. A colony that depends on human care and loses it is, in practice, condemned; a measure of that kind is hard to reconcile with the requirements of necessity and proportionality, and with the recognition of animals as sentient beings already found in Puerto Rico’s Animal Protection and Welfare Act and in the Civil Code.

The column reviews the evidence on trap-neuter-return (TNR) programs, adopted by more than 650 municipalities in the United States, and argues that authorities should ground their decisions in that evidence instead of penalizing the people who care for the animals.

Read the full column at Microjuris al Día (in Spanish).