EcoWatch - Greenpeace is being sued by Energy Transfer, a Dallas-based company that is accusing the longtime environmentalist group of having disrupted its business with protests near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation almost a decade ago. The trial began Monday in North Dakota, and, if successful, the lawsuit could bankrupt the nonprofit.
Filed in state court, legal action accuses Greenpeace of an “unlawful and violent scheme to cause financial harm to Energy Transfer, physical harm to its employees and infrastructure, and to disrupt and prevent Energy Transfer’s construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline,” reported BBC News.
Environmental activists said the claims are meant to suppress freedom of speech and establish a disturbing precedent for protest groups, The New York Times reported.
Greenpeace, they said, was there to support Native Americans, who led the demonstrations.
“This trial is a critical test of the future of the First Amendment, both freedom of speech and peaceful protest under the Trump administration and beyond,” Sushma Raman, Greenpeace’s interim director, said on Thursday. More
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