Above photo: At the height of the NoDAPL movement, solidarity protests took place across the country. Pictured is a march in San Francisco in 2016. Pax Ahimsa Gethen/Wikimedia Commons.
The 300 million dollar lawsuit over anti-pipeline protests could chill environmental activism and Indigenous struggle.
Energy Transfer, the US energy giant that owns or operates over 125,000 miles of oil pipelines throughout the US, is suing environmental activism group Greenpeace for USD 300 million in damages in a trial that began last week. The company claims that the nonprofit organized the mass demonstrations and protest camp at the Standing Rock Reservation against the Dakota Access Pipeline between 2016 and 2017. If Greenpeace loses this case and is forced to pay the hundreds of millions in damages demanded by Energy Transfer, it would effectively end their operations in the United States.
“This case is not just an obvious and blatant erasure of Indigenous leadership, of Indigenous resistance,” said Deepa Padmanabha, a senior legal adviser for Greenpeace, in an interview on Democracy Now, “it is an attack on the broader movement and all of our First Amendment rights to free speech and peaceful protest.”
No DAPL
Energy Transfer announced plans for the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in 2014. The struggle against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline expanded shortly before its construction in 2016, spearheaded by Indigenous activists and organizers, including those of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, who referred to themselves as water protectors and land defenders. Activists argued that the pipeline posed a serious threat to the region’s water and was in violation of Indigenous sovereignty. The protests became known under the hashtag #NoDAPL.
In the summer of 2016, activists around the world began to flock to a camp established by Indigenous protesters near the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe reservation to oppose the project. Over the course of the year, the camp swelled as other Indigenous activists, as well as supporters from across the globe, joined the struggle.
Those in the camp faced pepper spray, tear gas, water cannons in freezing weather, and attack dogs. Their persistent struggle in spite of the severe state repression, even in the time of the Obama administration, inspired thousands of people around the world. Solidarity protests grew, taking place in major US cities such as Washington, DC, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Denver, and Los Angeles.
The protests ended in February of 2017, after the National Guard and law enforcement evicted the camp.
The first oil was delivered through the pipeline in May of 2017, and it became fully operational in June of that year. Today, the Dakota Access Pipeline is a 1,172-mile-long underground pipeline that transports crude oil through the Bakken region of North Dakota to Illinois.
In 2021, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit sided with the Standing Rock Sioux and other Native American tribes in that there should have been a thorough environmental review of a section of the pipeline. Despite this, the pipeline remains operational after the Supreme Court declined to hear this case in 2022. In fact, the pipeline has expanded since 2017, increasing its capacity from 500,000 to 750,000 barrels of oil per day.
Dangerous Precedent
If Energy Transfer wins, the case has the potential to chill free speech and Indigenous struggle for decades to come. “If they can try to shut down Greenpeace, they’re going to shut down everybody,” said Indigenous activist Winona LaDuke in an interview with Democracy Now. LaDuke took part in the protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which was completed in 2017.
“I feel like this fight is bigger than Greenpeace,” Montgomery Brown, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, who also participated in the no-DAPL protests, told The New York Times. “It’s about protecting the free speech and democracy.”
“This is a textbook SLAPP [strategic lawsuit against public participation] lawsuit—an intimidation tactic designed to silence activists and undermine our right to protest,” wrote Steven Donziger, a lawyer who has waged his own battle against severe legal repression from oil giant Chevron, and was subject to 45 days in prison and a combined total of 993 days under house arrest as a result of Chevron’s legal attacks.
The billionaire CEO of Energy Transfer, Kelcy Warren, has deep ties to the current Trump administration. Warren, together with his spouse, contributed USD 1.8 million to Donald Trump’s campaign for president in 2020.
Warren has shown an immense disdain for Standing Rock protesters, saying that anti-pipeline protesters be “removed from the gene pool.”
Greenpeace had petitioned for the trial to be moved out of Morton County, North Dakota, arguing that the jury would not be impartial and raising concerns that the jury pool might have been targeted with pro-fossil fuel advertisements. On March 5, the North Dakota Supreme Court denied Greenpeace’s petition without explaining its reasoning. The state’s Supreme Court also did not provide reasoning for denying a request by a group of news outlets, including the North Dakota Monitor, for expanded access to cover the trial proceedings.
“Nearly every juror has ties to the fossil fuel industry,” wrote Steven Donziger. “There isn’t a single Native American or person of color on the panel. Most jurors admitted they couldn’t be impartial, yet the judge seated them anyway.”
This lawsuit comes as the climate crisis across the globe is only escalating. People around the US are experiencing heightened natural disasters due to climate change, with massive wildfires devastating Los Angeles, one of the most populous cities in the country, and cities and communities in the southeastern part of the US destroyed by Hurricanes Helene and Milton last year.