On Wednesday, March 19, a North Dakota jury ruled that the environmental nonprofit Greenpeace must pay USD 667 million to Energy Transfer for defamation, over the protests that occurred at Standing Rock almost a decade ago. Greenpeace had attempted to move the suit 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. This attempt was ultimately rejected by the North Dakota Supreme Court.
Energy Transfer Partners filed a lawsuit in 2019 against Greenpeace, arguing that the environmental organization had “incited” protest using a “misinformation campaign”. 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 expressed an immense disdain for Standing Rock protesters, saying that anti-pipeline protesters be “removed from the gene pool.”
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 the rights Indigenous people, and launched a movement that continued until roughly February 2017, defining the struggle both against climate change and for Indigenous sovereignty.
“This verdict is not the end of this case,” Greenpeace said in a March 20 statement. “We’re going to appeal. And we’re prepared to fight this all the way to victory.”
“We’ve fought Energy Transfer’s lawsuits for more than seven years,” the organization continued. “Every step of the way, we’ve emphasized that these types of lawsuits—intended to silence and shut down critics—are part of a growing national attack on our First Amendment rights.”
“A Big Oil-stacked jury just sided with corporate power,” wrote the Center for Constitutional Rights in a post responding to the verdict. “This is a dangerous attack on the right to protest, but the fight is not over,” the CCR wrote.
“We should all be concerned about the future of the first amendment, and lawsuits like these aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech. Greenpeace will continue to do its part to fight for the protection of these fundamental rights for everyone,” Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace’s senior legal adviser, told The Guardian.
