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dakota access pipeline
Energy Transfer Is Putting Free Speech and Climate Activism on Trial
A lawsuit against Greenpeace in North Dakota threatens the existence of all nonprofits.
Feb 21, 2025
Imagine a world without effective nonprofit advocacy. When a corporation exploits a local community, no one speaks up or resists. Everyone is too afraid of the weaponized legal system, too vulnerable to liability. The ultra-wealthy take whatever they want and leave others to pick up the pieces. Opposition and resistance have been extinguished.
Those are the risks of a lawsuit against Greenpeace, now going to trial in North Dakota after a seven-year legal battle. Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million for tort damages, including defamation. Energy Transfer’s previous attempt to sue Greenpeace under federal anti-racketeering laws was blocked by the courts. But the state charges have been upheld, with a trial beginning on February 24, and free-speech advocates are raising alarms about the dangerous precedent that would follow a loss for Greenpeace, or even from the trial proceeding at all.
I recently spoke with Scott W. Badenoch, Jr., a visiting attorney at the Environmental Law Institute. He’s part of a team of distinguished international legal scholars, including Steven Donziger and Jeanne Mirer, who have launched a Trial Monitoring Committee to ensure the case against Greenpeace proceeds fairly and transparently.
While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake.
As Badenoch described it, the court is trying to maintain “as much of a black box as you could possibly create in the U.S. court system.” Judge James Gion recently denied a motion to allow live streaming of the trial proceedings.
Instead, Badenoch said the case should be dismissed immediately. The allegations attempt to hold Greenpeace responsible for the actions of activists and volunteers unaffiliated with the group. Legal advocates and climate organizers have called it an unconstitutional SLAPP suit, intended to burden Greenpeace with costly legal fees, shut them down, and restrict the free speech of nonprofits more broadly. “There is absolutely no justification for this trial happening in this court, at this time, with this judge,” Badenoch said. “Just none.”
In a press release from the Trial Monitoring Committee, Steven Donziger pointed to recent trends, writing that “this appears to be part of a broader strategy by the fossil fuel industry to weaponize the courts against activists and weaken organizations like Greenpeace in retaliation for their advocacy.”
While the trial itself presents dangers, the recent actions of Energy Transfer have also brought accusations of jury-tampering. In October, residents of rural Morton County, North Dakota, where the trial will be set, received what appeared to be a legitimate newspaper. However, it contained almost exclusively critical attacks on Greenpeace and the pipeline protests, while praising Energy Transfer. The “newspaper” was actually a political mailer from a company called Metric Media, with links to electioneering and fossil fuel companies, as reported in the North Dakota News Cooperative. Even more concerning, financial records link the CEO of Energy Transfer, Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, to the creation of the fake newspaper. It looks a like blatant attempt to taint the jury pool. Despite this, Judge Gion refused to allow Greenpeace to investigate the origins of the biased mailer.
The crucial role of the Trial Monitoring Committee is to bring attention to these abuses of due process. “We are going to monitor this case one way or the other,” Badenoch told me. “But the more that [Judge Gion] withholds transparency and access from us, the more obvious it is that something is going on that they don’t want people to see.”
Meanwhile, the stakes of the case extend far beyond Greenpeace. If Energy Transfer is successful, Badenoch said, the precedent would be cataclysmic for nonprofit advocacy. An organization could be held liable for any actions by any activists, however tenuously affiliated. “Literally every social justice, climate justice, civil rights, human rights organization across the country—and maybe the planet—is at risk of legal murder in a courtroom, where an organization is put to death by a SLAPP suit.”
As members of the public, that means we all have a responsibility to advocate for transparency, fairness, and ideally dismissal of Energy Transfer’s lawsuit. While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake. Badenoch was emphatic about this: “The number one thing is to bring attention to the case. Don’t let Greenpeace die with a whimper.”
In a time of chaos and distraction, it’s all too easy to let cases like this one go unnoticed. But the risks are simply too dire to ignore. “It’s absolutely terrifying for advocacy in this country and beyond. The risks are really hard to overstate,” Badenoch told me. “If Greenpeace is allowed to die in this field in North Dakota, then every single nonprofit is next in line.”
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Case That Could Inflict 'Financial Ruin' on Greenpeace Heads to Trial
"This fight is bigger than Greenpeace. This lawsuit is a blatant attempt to silence critics and hide destructive practices," said the campaign director of Greenpeace USA.
Feb 20, 2025
With a high-stakes court trial between the environmental organization Greenpeace and the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Energy Transfer, set to begin Monday, the green group earlier this month lit up multiple locations in both Dallas and Washington, D.C. with giant projections that displayed messages such as, "You Can't Put a Movement on Trial" and, "Big Oil Is Suing Greenpeace."
The Dallas-based oil and gas company Energy Transfer—whose executive chairman Warren Kelcy is a donor to U.S President Donald Trump, according to the The Guardian—has accused Greenpeace and other activists of inciting protests that took place against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017, as well as spreading misinformation about and vandalizing the project.
The lawsuit names Greenpeace International and two U.S. Greenpeace entities. Greenpeace maintains that the protests were directed by Indigenous leaders, not Greenpeace.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its allies said the pipeline, which has been in operation since 2017 and carries crude oil from the Brakken oil fields in North Dakota to Illinois, would endanger the water supply for the reservation and violate the tribe's right to its land.
If successful, the $300 million lawsuit could inflict "financial ruin" on the group, according to Greenpeace. This would have a chilling effect on the organization's work, but leaders within the group have also cast it as an attack on the environmental movement and free speech more broadly.
"This fight is bigger than Greenpeace. This lawsuit is a blatant attempt to silence critics and hide destructive practices," said Rolf Skar, the campaign director of Greenpeace USA, in a Tuesday statement.
Of the projections in D.C. and Dallas, Skar said they "are a testament to that resilience, shining a light on the truth and reminding everyone fighting for a just and livable future that we will not back down."
In a similar vein, Deepa Padmanabha, Greenpeace's deputy general counsel, toldThe Guardian that "Energy Transfer and the fossil fuel industry do not understand the difference between entities and movements. You can't bankrupt the movement. You can't silence the movement. There will be a backlash and a price to pay when you pursue these kinds of tactics."
"People power is more powerful," she added.
The case has also been decried as an example of what are known as "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation"—or "SLAPP" lawsuits, meritless cases whose goal it to bankrupt civil society groups and nonprofits with years of litigation and legal fees.
Greenpeace International, which is based in Amsterdam, has been the first group to initiate a lawsuit under the European Union's new anti-SLAPP directive. The group has sued in a Dutch court to recoup losses it has incurred as a result of its legal fight with Energy Transfer.
Of its bid under the anti-SLAPP directive, Daniel Simons, senior legal counsel at Greenpeace International, said in early February that "if we prevail, it will send a message to corporate bullies that the age of impunity is ending. That would be a boost for civil society in the E.U., and point to solutions for those battling the SLAPP phenomenon elsewhere."
There is no federal anti-SLAPP law on the books in the United States.
There has also been intrigue surrounding the circumstances of the upcoming trial in North Dakota. Greenpeace unsuccessfully sought to have the case moved to a different court over concerns of potential jury bias. The Guardian and the local outlet the North Dakota Monitor have reported on mysterious mailers that were sent to local residents that contain written material slanted against Dakota Access Pipeline protestors and in favor of Energy Transfer.
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Greenpeace Fights Dakota Access Pipeline Suit With EU Anti-SLAPP Law
"Energy Transfer's lawsuit is a perfect prototype of what the E.U. Directive aims to end: wealthy players using towering legal claims and costs to muzzle criticism," said a senior legal counsel for Greenpeace.
Aug 21, 2024
With "the future of advocacy and peaceful protest" on the line, as one leader of Greenpeace USA said, the international environmental group has become the first entity to use a new European Union law aimed at stopping powerful corporations from filing meritless legal challenges.
Greenpeace International is among the defendants in a $300 million lawsuit originally filed in 2017 by Energy Transfer (ET), the Texas-based oil company that has accused Greenpeace of inciting protests against the firm's Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota, and of vandalizing property and delaying the pipeline project.
Greenpeace's home base of Amsterdam allows it to apply the E.U.'s Anti-SLAPP Directive, which was adopted in April with the goal of stopping legal challenges that are deemed to be "Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation"—lawsuits that are meant to bankrupt civil society groups and nonprofits with years of litigation and legal fees.
As The New York Timesreported Tuesday, Greenpeace International last month sent a Notice of Liability to ET, which is headed by a close ally of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying it will use the Anti-SLAPP Directive to counter-sue the company in the Netherlands.
The group said it aims to recover all damages and costs it has suffered as a result of ET's lawsuit unless the company withdraws the case and pays Greenpeace back for the fees it has incurred fighting the litigation so far.
"Energy Transfer's lawsuit is a perfect prototype of what the E.U. Directive aims to end: wealthy players using towering legal claims and costs to muzzle criticism. Thanks to a concerted civil society campaign, there is now a strong tool to stop these cases at the E.U. border and to fight back against them," said Daniel Simons, senior legal counsel for strategic defense for Greenpeace International.
Greenpeace has argued it did not organize protests that included a huge encampment near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation from 2016-17, where Indigenous tribes and environmental advocates protested ET's construction of the 1,170-mile crude oil pipeline. It has said it did not participate in any violence or property destruction at the protests.
"From the outset, this has been an attempt by ET to bury nonprofits and activists in legal fees, push them towards bankruptcy, and ultimately silence dissent," said Greenpeace.
The group's chapter in the United Kingdom spoke out on Wednesday, saying the lawsuit represents an "existential threat" to Greenpeace.
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and its allies said the pipeline would endanger the water supply for the reservation and violate the tribe's right to its land. The pipeline began operating in 2017 after Trump issued an executive order, but it has yet to receive federal approval.
ET's lawsuit against Greenpeace is scheduled to go before a jury in Morton County, North Dakota next February.
Anna Myers, executive director of the Whistleblowing International Network and member of the steering committee for the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe, said Greenpeace is applying the Anti-SLAPP Directive to confront a growing threat posed by powerful corporations, including fossil fuel firms.
"The Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe was set up in response to build solidarity and advance the case for anti-SLAPP legislation, including the E.U. Anti-SLAPP Directive published in April 2024," said Myers. "Energy Transfer's lawsuit—and the Notice of Liability issued by Greenpeace International—represents a crucial test of this new law."
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