Protest and Free Speech Rights on the Line as Greenpeace Stands Trial in North Dakota

Trial in one of the biggest SLAPP suits in the world presents a “critical test of the future of the First Amendment”

Greenpeace officials and other advocates participated in a panel event on SLAPP suits during Climate Week NYC in September 2024. Credit: Dana Drugmand

Starting next week, a courtroom in North Dakota will be the battleground for one of the highest stakes legal fights over First Amendment rights – including the right to peaceful protest – in years. On Monday, February 24, trial is scheduled to open in a case filed by the fossil fuel firm Energy Transfer against the environmental activist organization Greenpeace. Energy Transfer is the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), a 1,172-mile crude oil pipeline that began operating in June 2017 despite fierce resistance from Indigenous activists and allies. Much of that resistance took place on the ground in 2016 at the Standing Rock tribal reservation.

Now, almost ten years later, Energy Transfer is putting Greenpeace on trial for allegedly orchestrating these protests. Greenpeace says this is an entirely false characterization, as the Standing Rock demonstrations were Indigenous led. Nevertheless, the pipeline company is seeking to hold Greenpeace USA entities and Greenpeace International liable for $300 million – a sum that could potentially bankrupt the organization’s US arm.

The lawsuit is a prime example of a SLAPP case, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, which is a tactic that big corporations and powerful interests use to try to intimidate critics and quell dissent. According to Greenpeace, this case brought by Energy Transfer “is one of the largest – if not the largest – SLAPP lawsuit” ever filed, though, as the organization notes, “these kinds of lawsuits have also been used to go after journalists, activists, Indigenous water protectors, and Black Lives Matter protestors.”

“Big Oil is trying to silence its critics,” Sushma Rama, interim executive director of Greenpeace USA, said during a press briefing on Thursday. She called the trial in North Dakota “a critical test of the future of the First Amendment – both freedom of speech and peaceful protest, under the Trump administration and beyond.”

“A bad ruling in this case could put our rights and freedoms in jeopardy, for all of us, whether we are journalists, protestors, or anyone who wants to engage in public debate,” Rama added.

Greenpeace did play a minor supporting role in the Standing Rock protests, by supporting a small delegation to travel to Standing Rock to run nonviolence and direct action trainings, at the request of Indigenous activists on the ground. The organization, along with other advocacy groups, also signed onto a letter and urged banks to divest from the pipeline project. Those actions appear to be the basis for Energy Transfer’s legal claims, which center around defamation and communications made to banks as well as tortious interference on the ground at Standing Rock, Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace USA senior legal advisor, explained during the press briefing.

Padmanabha said the claims are all meritless, and that the law and facts are on the organization’s side. A ruling against Greenpeace, however, could set a chilling precedent that threatens democratic public participation like protests and environmental advocacy, at a time when mega-corporations and the ultra-rich already have enormous political power and the planet is dangerously overheating.

“This is a test case, and it’s much bigger than Greenpeace,” Padmanabha said. “We want to deter corporations from considering this tactic in the future.”

This is not the first time that Greenpeace has faced a SLAPP suit from a fossil fuel corporation. Big Oil companies such as Shell, Total, and Eni have also filed SLAPP suits against Greenpeace entities in recent years.

“Just last year, Shell tried to silence Greenpeace UK and Greenpeace International with an intimidation lawsuit, but over a quarter of a million people spoke out, and eventually they backed down and we reached a settlement agreement,” Greenpeace International’s Kristin Casper said during the press briefing.

Greenpeace Sues Energy Transfer in the Netherlands

With SLAPP cases on the rise – over 1,000 have been filed in Europe between 2010 and 2023 – the European Union passed a law last year to help protect individuals and entities targeted by these lawsuits, even if the suits themselves are filed outside the EU.

That law is now seeing its first enforcement test case – on February 11, Greenpeace International (based in the Netherlands) sued Energy Transfer in the District Court of Amsterdam under the EU’s anti-SLAPP directive. Greenpeace said it is not trying to block the North Dakota trial, which will still proceed unless Energy Transfer suddenly decides to drop its suit. Instead, Greenpeace International is seeking a court declaration that Energy Transfer acted wrongly by engaging in an abuse of process and bringing a SLAPP, an order for the company to compensate Greenpeace for all costs and damages, and an order that the company publish the judgment along with a short statement acknowledging that it acted unlawfully. Should Energy Transfer fail to publish the judgment and statement, Greenpeace wants the court to impose a penalty of 10,000 Euros a day as a way to induce compliance. The first hearing in this proceeding in the Netherlands will hopefully happen this year in July, Casper said.

“Greenpeace International is determined to take this fight and to demonstrate that attempts to silence us backfire,” Daniel Simons, senior legal counsel for Greenpeace International, said via email.

Raman of Greenpeace USA echoed that sentiment, telling journalists during Thursday’s briefing that the organization is not backing down. “We will not be silenced,” she said. “You cannot sue a movement.”

Solidarity with Standing Rock

That movement stands in solidarity with the Indigenous activists and water protectors, the original stewards of the land who continue to fight against extractive industries and oppression.

Waniya Locke, a grassroots Indigenous organizer at Standing Rock, said that the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline was “matriarch led,” Native women coming together to stand against a “black snake” that threatened to poison the drinking water for entire communities. To see an organization like Greenpeace be targeted for the protests, she said, fits the pattern of trying to ignore or erase Indigenous voices.

“It didn’t surprise Indigenous activists to see that our narrative was trying to be erased in a very racist way,” Locke said.

The trial in North Dakota is expected to take about five weeks. A verdict could come at the end of March or early April.