Greenpeace will have to pay Energy Transfer $667 million over its involvement in protests of a pipeline the company was constructing in 2016, a North Dakota jury decided Wednesday. Legacy media outlets, as well as Greenpeace, have been characterizing the verdict as an assault on free speech. 

The Washington Post called the judgment a “massive financial blow to the group [Greenpeace] that environmentalists say could chill future advocacy.” NPR quoted Jennifer Safstrom, a First Amendment legal expert at Vanderbilt University, warning that environmental advocates could face liabilities. E&E News said the verdict could “stifle public protest.” 

While the media have become very concerned about free-speech rights in the wake of the ruling against Greenpeace, they showed little concern when the protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and 2017 were restricting and harassing reporters who asked questions or took photos and videos the protesters didn’t like. 

The case also shows a shift in oil companies’ willingness to go on the offensive in the courts. Often the target of so-called “lawfare,” the companies are more frequently taking legal actions against individuals and entities that target them. 

Allegations in court

According to court filings, Energy Transfer argued that protesters engaged in a campaign of “militant direct action,” which included trespassing on the company’s private property, assaulting its employees and contractors and vandalizing its construction equipment. 

The company sued three Greenpeace organizations — Greenpeace USA, Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Fund — but the jury found only Greenpeace USA liable for the company’s alleged harms, the North Dakota Monitor reported. 

Throughout testimony during the trial, Greenpeace maintained that the protests were led by indigenous groups and it only provided support that the groups asked for, according to the Monitor. Law enforcement who were present at the protests, as well as witnesses and native organizers, testified that Greenpeace was not seen in leadership roles at the camps. 

Greenpeace has said it will appeal the decision and argues the lawsuit was meant to deny them freedom of expression. 

“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,” Greenpeace said in a statement. 

"Daily harassments and disruptions"

In a statement to Just the News, Vicki Granado, spokesperson for Energy Transfer, said the company is pleased that Greenpeace was held accountable for the actions the company alleges the group took against Energy Transfer during the protests. 

“This win is also for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters who were funded and trained by Greenpeace. It is also a win for all law-abiding Americans who understand the difference between the right to free speech and breaking the law. That the disrupters have been held responsible is a win for all of us,” Granado said. 

Protest camps

During the protests, legacy and progressive media outlets gave the protesters overwhelmingly friendly press. The Guardian reported in 2016 that the “protest camps have repeatedly emphasized that they intend to remain unarmed and peaceful.” The article then goes on to say that law enforcement responded to peaceful protesters with a “militarized police force that has aggressively targeted protesters attempting to block construction.”

The protesters also received a lot of support from celebrities. Rolling Stone reported on a performance by 1960s rocker Neil Young at the site of the protests, as well as an open letter signed by musicians Kate Nash, Radiohead and Green Day in support of the protesters.  

Progressive outlet The Nation reported how journalist Amy Goodman, host of "Democracy Now!," stood “at the edge of a sacred burial ground…clutching a microphone.” Goodman was later arrested for trespassing, as the site where she was standing was Energy Transfer's private property. The charges were later dropped. 

The route of the pipeline never crossed the Standing Rock Sioux reservation, and, as the company explained on the project’s website, archaeological assessments that were required as part of the permitting process yielded no evidence the project would disturb human remains. 

Protesters screened and restricted media 

Some reporters in 2016 tried to take an objective view of what was happening at the protest and found the protesters had little respect for the First Amendment. Renee Jean, who was at the time a reporter for the Williston Herald — today Jean covers business and industry for the Wyoming-based Cowboy State Daily — wrote about her experience reporting on the protests. 

In a first-person narrative, Jean said that journalists had to be processed at a post that the protesters had set up at one of the camps. The protesters reviewed the journalists’ driver's license and credentials, and they put their pictures in a database. Reporters were required by the protesters to wear their press passes at all times, and the protesters wouldn’t allow them to take pictures of certain areas that the protesters said were “secretive.” According to Jean, if reporters asked “uncomfortable questions,” security could be called, who would take the journalists' equipment and delete their work. 

“We were not to take photographs where people would be recognizable without asking first, nor were we to take pictures of people wearing Native American regalia or engaging in private prayer or ceremonies without explicit permission. Even if we were going on an action that might be in a public place and involve interactions with public officials, we could only take photos if given permission by the action leader, or else might lose our pass, as well as, perhaps, all our work,” Jean wrote. 

Journalist Phelim McAleer also attended the protests. McAleer, along with his wife Ann McElhinney and Magdalena Segieda, produced “Fracknation” in 2013, which challenged the narrative presented in the anti-fracking documentary “Gasland.” 

McAleer and Segieda were conducting interviews at the Sacred Stone Camp in 2016. According to their account, a protester tried to grab McAleer’s microphone and assaulted him. As protesters began to gather around the pair, McAleer and Segieda took refuge in their car. According to law enforcement, the protesters surrounded their car, rocked and pounded it, and refused to let the journalists leave. Only when law enforcement intervened were they able to escape. 

“These were violent thugs, and now to pretend to be First Amendment warriors? They were warriors for thuggery. We feared for our lives that day,” McAleer told Just the News. 

McAleer said he was delighted by the verdict, as it will hold the protesters responsible for their actions. 

“They abducted me and my film crew for the crime of asking awkward questions. They threatened other journalists too. The reporting on this encampment was disgraceful. Rolling Stone did a story where they congratulated the organizers for the way they covered up an attempted rape. It seems the people of this protest could do anything and the media would give them a pass,” McAleer said. 

The Rolling Stone article said a man accused of attempted rape was banished from the camp. “The women paraded him around the camp calling out what trash he was, then cut off his braids and threw him out of camp,” the article stated, which portrayed the makeshift trial and sentence as part of Native American traditions. Rolling Stone did not indicate whether the attempted rape was reported to law enforcement.

Going on the offensive

The lawsuit against Greenpeace could be part of a recent trend in which oil and gas companies, which have been targets of extensive legal action attempting to shut down their operations, are going on the offensive in America’s courtrooms. 

Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, told Just the News that the industry is realizing it’s not dealing with people who are looking for a fair playing field. “We're dealing with those who want to seize power and to put this industry out of business permanently, and to take away the jobs permanently. They don't want to just influence policy. It's clear they want absolute power. And when you realize that, then trying to appease them is never going to be the answer,” Behrens said. 

ExxonMobil filed a lawsuit in January 2024 against a group of activist investor groups whose shareholder proposal was aimed at getting the company to address climate change by reducing its emissions. The proposal would require restricting the amount of oil and gas it produces, which would effectively be at odds with the company’s profitability. 

The company faced pressure from groups like CalPERS, which has $464.6 billion in assets under management, to drop the suit, but Exxon pursued it until a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in June on procedural grounds. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against Exxon over its efforts to recycle plastics, accusing the company of “deceptive statements” about the viability of plastics recycling. Exxon fired back with a defamation lawsuit in federal court against Bonta and several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club. That case was remanded from federal to state court in February. 

Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC is suing protesters of its pipeline, claiming they obstructed construction and interfered with the pipeline's operation. 

Judge Elizabeth Dillon of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia on Monday denied a group of protesters' motion to dismiss in one case and allowed one claim to survive in another against a single individual.

Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, told Just the News that companies are starting to go on the offensive. While the actions of larger corporations get the most media attention, he said, the smaller companies are much more willing to battle opponents in court. 

“Most of the legal efforts of the past four years have been led by the smaller companies because they had far more to lose. If you talk to some of those CEOs at smaller companies, they quietly have felt the larger companies embraced a strategy of appeasing the prior administration and didn’t push back hard enough. Appeasement is never a winning strategy, however, and the industry as a whole is lucky that small businesses engaged like they did,” Stewart said. 

"No love lost"

According to E&E News,  North Dakota doesn’t have an intermediate appellate-level court, which means Greenpeace’s appeal of the verdict will go directly to the North Dakota Supreme Court. If the appeal loses there, it could go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. 

For defenders of the oil and gas industry, they say the ruling against Greenpeace was a long time coming. “They've been using that strategy for years. So there is no love lost if they want to shed some tears now over having to be held accountable by the rules that they set,” Larry Behrens, communications director for Power the Future, told Just the News.