First Amendment liberties for free speech vs criminal action teeter in the litigation balance for the international environmental organization Greenpeace. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit just incurred a massive jury verdict exceeding $660 million for allegedly defaming and inciting illegal behavior against Energy Transfer, the corporate developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The activist entity’s fiscal survival possibly hangs in the balance.
Violence and Vandalism
Recent years have seen a spectacular increase in the use of violence, disruptions, and other nonverbal escalations of intensity in the name of free speech liberties. The destructive BLM riots that caused billions of dollars in property damage were justified by many as free expression. Keying, vandalizing, and burning Teslas to oppose DOGE is now common. Few causes have been more extreme in calling for illegal disruption than the climate change movement.
Following extensive protests that it claims cost hundreds of millions of dollars to oppose, Energy Transfer sued three Greenpeace entities – Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace International, and Greenpeace Fund – alleging criminal conduct. A North Dakota jury agreed, finding Greenpeace USA liable on almost all counts. The jury rejected claims that Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund were responsible for the alleged on-the-ground damages inflicted by protesters, but it did fault them for defamation and business interference. The jury additionally found Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International liable for conspiracy.
These are serious allegations, which Greenpeace attorneys claim are a form of speech-quelling lawfare attacking the First Amendment and their “rights to peaceful protest and free speech.” Yet freedom of speech has common-sense limitations, including longstanding restraints on defamation, tortious interference with business dealings, threats, physical violence, and inciting criminal behaviors. Gluing one’s hands to public artwork, blocking traffic (at the risk of preventing emergency response), or punching political opponents are not protected free speech liberties.
Radical Greenpeace Activism
Few would question Greenpeace’s rights to engage in protected speech expression to advance laudable goals to protect forests, curb illegal whaling activities, or stop toxic sludge from being dumped in the world’s oceans. Yet Greenpeace bills itself as “the largest environmental campaigning organization in the world,” having gained fame through often infamous and aggressive actions. The North Dakota jury awarded Energy Transfer more than double what it asked for – maybe Greenpeace went too far.
The activist organization’s website is headlined “Be a Warrior,” and it has become more ideologically radical since its early days of protesting nuclear testing. It advocates for environmental justice, claiming that “the fossil fuel industry continues to extract from public lands and exploit communities of color for profit.” This was alleged in its pipeline opposition, though the issues are not as morally pure as Greenpeace avers. Fossil fuels are essential to manufacturing the solar panels, EVs, and wind turbines championed as “green.” Native American tribes often receive substantial economic income from the extractions that Greenpeace seeks to block, which financially injures those it claims are being exploited.
Greenpeace launched its effort using physical intervention back in 1971 when it took a ship to block US nuclear testing at Amchitka Island. This successful gambit encouraged more free speech “actions,” including dropping massive limestone boulders into the sea to prevent fishing ships from bottom trawling in protected areas, suspending activists from bridges to block a Shell Oil vessel from leaving port, and other aggressive interventions that push the free speech envelope further than constitutional law allows.
Rainbow Warriors or Peaceful Protesters?
Certainly, Greenpeace would not call the bombing of its ship Rainbow Warrior in 1985 a free speech expression by its opposition. “Rainbow warrior” has now become synonymous with extremist trans-activists and violent Antifa thugs who advocate for murder, vandalism, and violence in the furtherance of their quasi-religious causes.
Steve Donziger – a member of a supposed “independent trial monitoring team that’s been observing the Greenpeace trial in Dakota” – claimed on the far-left news show Democracy Now! that Greenpeace has been victimized by the North Dakota court and jury:
“It was very clear that this was not going to be a trial as that term is commonly understood. I would really call it more a choreographed show, in a county that, you know, 75% of the people voted for Donald Trump. Greenpeace did a survey of residents prior to trial. Ninety-seven percent said they could not judge this case fairly. Of the jurors, most had ties to the fossil fuel industry.
“And I think this company – and it’s really been driven largely by CEO Kelcy Warren, who is a huge Trump supporter — is trying to use this as a vehicle, really, to intimidate the climate movement, intimidate the Standing Rock Sioux and, I think, really chill people’s First Amendment rights.”
Presumably, Greenpeace’s legal counsel had an opportunity to interview potential jurors for political bias or conflicts of interest before the trial. Greenpeace interim executive director Sushma Raman claims the jury’s verdict was “a broader effort by corporations to stifle dissent” and is “part of a renewed push by corporations to weaponize our courts to silence dissent … aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech.”
But therein lies the core question – did Greenpeace go over the “peaceful protest” line protected by the First Amendment? Left-wing extremism dominates daily headlines as Teslas are torched by attackers who call Musk a Nazi and clamor for his death.
If Greenpeace defamed a lawful business or paid protesters to engage in extremist attacks, it is not suffering an infringement of its rights but is guilty of the opposite – attacking others’ legal freedoms. The jury may simply be holding it accountable: an overdue brake on growing violent extremism.
America will indeed be watching the outcome of the vigilante Greenpeace appeal, which it vows to pursue.
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