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Environmental Protesters Fight Defamation Lawsuit Filed by Coal Ash Landfill
ACLU Makes Free Speech Case Defending Residents of Low-Income, Majority Black Alabama Town
MOBILE, AL
The American Civil Liberties Union today asked a federal court to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed against four people who voiced opposition to a coal ash landfill in their small town.
The defendants, all residents of Uniontown, Alabama -- a poor, predominantly Black town with a median per capita income of around $8,000 -- are being sued for $30 million by Georgia-based Green Group Holdings because the residents are fighting the hazardous coal ash that the company keeps in a landfill in a residential area.
"This lawsuit involves speech at the very core of the First Amendment," said Lee Rowland, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "No one should have to face a multimillion-dollar federal lawsuit just for engaging in heartfelt community advocacy. All Americans have a right to speak out against hazardous substances being dumped in their home towns, and the Constitution prevents companies from using lawsuits to silence their critics."
In 2009, Arrowhead Landfill in Uniontown became the new host for millions of cubic yards of coal ash after it spilled out of a landfill in Tennessee following a catastrophic dike failure. The coal ash in Tennessee contaminated land, rivers, reservoirs, and shore areas surrounding the landfill with arsenic and lead, leading the Environmental Protection Agency to conclude that there was a potential "imminent and substantial endangerment to the public health."
Residents of Uniontown organized in opposition to what they saw as a racial and environmental injustice, speaking out against the risk to their environment and health, as well as the location of the landfill, which is across the street from several homes and next to one of the town's historic Black cemeteries. Some 35 residents filed a complaint with the EPA's Office of Civil Rights under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The complaint alleges that the Alabama Department of Environmental Management violated their civil rights by allowing the Arrowhead Landfill to locate in their predominately Black neighborhood without adequate protections for the health of residents or the environment.
Some citizens also organized a concerned-citizens' group called the Black Belt Citizens Fighting for Health and Justice, which created a Facebook page that publishes concerns about risks to their environment and health. Green Group sued over the Facebook posts, which included statements such as "we should all have the right to clean air and clean water" and "It affected our everyday life."
The population of Uniontown is 91 percent Black, and 48 percent live below the poverty line. In addition to being the site of the Arrowhead Landfill -- the biggest municipal waste dump in the state -- is also the site of a sewage lagoon, catfish farms, and a large cheese processing plant.
The site of the Arrowhead Landfill was once a plantation where Uniontown residents' Black ancestors -- including both enslaved people and tenant farmers -- picked cotton, and some are buried in graves near the site. Some Black residents now say that they are unsure about the location and treatment of their ancestors' remains.
"State officials would never have allowed the landfill to be here if we were a rich, white neighborhood," said Esther Calhoun, one of the Uniontown residents Green Group is accusing of defamation. "They put it here because we're a poor, Black community and they thought we wouldn't fight back. But we are fighting back and we're not afraid to make our voices heard."
Before filing the defamation suit, a lawyer for Green Group provided the defendants with a list of demands in exchange for not filing the lawsuit. The "settlement proposal" -- which was sent before any lawsuit had been filed -- would have required a full apology from each defendant, full-day interviews about their community advocacy, forensic searches of each of our client's electronic devices, access to the group's future social media postings, and extensive details about Black Belt Citizens' membership, advocacy, and communications with other environmental groups. The proposal also would have required each of the defendants to withdraw as complainants in the federal civil rights complaint filed with the EPA.
"Not only have Black people been expected to endure this kind of systematic racial and environmental injustice throughout our nation's history, they are expected to bear it silently or be subjected to harsh consequences just for advocating for their health and community," said Dennis Parker, director of the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. "We want to ensure that our clients don't have to face that choice in Uniontown."
The defendants in the case are represented by lawyers from the ACLU's Speech, Privacy & Technology Project; the ACLU's Racial Justice Program; the ACLU of Alabama; Charles S. Sims of the law firm Proskauer Rose; and Alabama attorneys Bill Dawson and Matthew Swerdlin.
Today's motion to dismiss, the "settlement proposal" previously offered to the defendants, and other case documents are here:
The American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 and is our nation's guardian of liberty. The ACLU works in the courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to all people in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
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"We can't put a nuclear warhead on a teacher's desk in real life, but with AR we can make you see it there. It puts the cost of these decisions in the room where your kids learn, at the scale where you can actually feel it."
Apr 21, 2026
A new educational campaign is using augmented reality technology to help American students understand the true costs of possessing and maintaining a massive stockpile of nuclear weapons.
Up in Arms, a campaign started by Ben & Jerry's co-founder Ben Cohen to increase support for slashing the bloated US defense spending budget, has teamed with nonprofit media lab Amplifier to create Class Dismissed, a new initiative that gives students in K-12 classrooms a jarring visual representation of nuclear weapons.
"This is a campaign about tradeoffs," Classed Dismissed states on its website. "By placing full-scale representations of nuclear weapons into classrooms, gyms, libraries, and schoolyards, the project makes national spending priorities visible at human scale. As federal military budgets expand, domestic programs are squeezed year after year. While hundreds of billions flow into Cold War–era weapons, schools are left with overcrowded classrooms, aging buildings, and fewer teachers and support staff."
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Aaron Huey, founder of Amplifier and creative director for Class Dismissed, said the campaign decided to use augmented reality technology to accomplish "things that are physically impossible but politically necessary."
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Oil price spikes caused by the US and Israel's war in Iran are straining the pocketbooks of ordinary citizens the world over. But a new study shows that even in normal times, dependence on fossil fuels poses a tremendous financial cost while a small group of companies reaps the rewards.
The report published by the environmental group 350.org on Tuesday found that people around the world are subsidizing the fossil fuel industry to the tune of $12 trillion per year, a cost of about $1,400 for every person on Earth.
The number goes beyond direct government subsidies, with the report explaining that "ordinary people are paying for fossil fuels three times over."
The fossil fuel industry costs every person on Earth $1,400 a year — and pays almost nothing back.350.org's new #OutOfPocket report breaks it down. Santa Marta is the first conference ever called to end fossil fuels, and this report is the receipt.Read the full report: 350.org/out-of-pocke...
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— 350.org (@350.org) April 21, 2026 at 9:26 AM
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The report estimates that during the first 50 days of the Iran war, consumers and businesses have paid an additional $158.6–$166.9 billion due to higher fuel costs. This comes not only at the gas pump, but through heightened costs for food, transport fees, and other basic necessities.
"This crisis is a stark reminder of just how risky it is to rely on fossil fuels, with around 80% of global energy still coming from them and driving the instability we see today," said Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at Oxford University. "Price volatility is not a flaw in the fossil fuel system; it is a built-in feature."
An investigation published earlier this month by The Guardian found that while consumers are getting hit, the war has been a bonanza for Big Oil. The top 100 companies have raked in an extra $30 million per hour since it began and made $23 billion in windfall profits during the war's first month.
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Using peer-reviewed data relied on by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 350.org estimated that the global population is footing the bill for about $9.3 trillion in climate-related damages and air-pollution-related deaths each year, social costs that the industry causes but pays almost nothing to solve.
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Eastern Africa has dealt with the displacement of more than 20 million people from record-breaking floods and droughts.
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"A building El Niño means 2026 and 2027 will set new global temperature records, and that will offer yet more chaos, and yet more reminders that it is the poorest people on Earth who must bear most of the cost of this ongoing tragedy," he said.
The research conducted by 350.org was built on a model used by the IMF, which found that fossil fuels were costing taxpayers about $7.4 trillion. However, that research rested on a carbon price of $85 per tonne of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.
350.org found that this figure, which "represents the cheapest possible price to keep warming below 2°C," vastly understates the damage caused by warming, which peer-reviewed research suggests is between $185-233 per tonne.
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"The economic case for fossil fuels has not just weakened, it has collapsed," said Anne Jellema, 350.org's chief executive.
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A coalition of progressive organizations is organizing a protest against what they describe as a "corruption gala" being held by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison in honor of President Donald Trump.
According to a report published last week by Breaker Media, Ellison is planning to hold on "intimate gathering" this Thursday with the purpose of "honoring the Trump White House and CBS White House correspondents."
Ellison, who took over CBS in 2025 as part of the merger between Paramount and Skydance, is seeking approval for a $110 billion megamerger with Warner Bros. Discovery that would also give him control over CNN and has drawn opposition from antitrust advocates and Hollywood bigwigs.
In response to this event, seven progressive organizations—MoveOn, Common Cause, Committee for the First Amendment, Public Citizen, Free Press, Our Revolution, and Democracy Defenders Action—are planning demonstrations on April 23 outside the headquarters of the US Institute of Peace.
The groups said in a statement announcing the protest that Ellison's decision to honor Trump at an exclusive dinner is a "blatant conflict of interest" given that he is relying on the president's administration to sign off on the Warner Bros. Discovery deal.
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Actor Mark Ruffalo announced in a Sunday social media post that he would be joining the demonstration against Ellison's Trump-honoring dinner, and he encouraged his followers to join him.
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