The biggest polluters increasingly use SLAPP and Anti-SLAPP to evade legal accountability
Por Skye Walker
Becario legal
At FarmSTAND, we champion people’s right to criticize Big Ag and to demand accountability from their government and legal system. It’s a right that’s under attack by the Trump Administration, which has found new and novel ways to silence those speaking on issues that Trump perceives as contrary to the conservative political agenda. “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation” or SLAPP suits for short, similarly stand in the way of civic engagement and democratic accountability.
SLAPPs are frivolous cases filed no to resolve a conflict or protect some legitimate legal right, but instead to bury one’s critics in legal fees and bully them into silence. These suits, filed by powerful individuals or companies, often allege harm to that person or business’s reputation or interference with their economic interests.
Of course, the real power in SLAPP lies not in winning a case, but in punishing and deterring those who dare to exercise their First Amendment right and speak out on matters of public concern. While SLAPP suits are nothing new, they have recently gained traction as a tactic fossil fuel companies use to punish activists, NGOs, and even political leaders for their actions in publicly opposing policies and practices that harm the environment or worsen climate change.
Last month, the gravity of SLAPP hit hard when a jury in North Dakota found Greenpeace liable for over $660 million in damages in a defamation case brought by Texas-based pipeline company, Energy Transfer. The company had accused Greenpeace of playing a central role in organizing the resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016 and 2017, where the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe led protests.
The jury verdict followed a deeply flawed trial and is a grim example of just how dangerous SLAPP can be when wielded by powerful corporate interests on a mission to bankrupt their opposition.
Unfortunately, Energy Transfer is not alone. ExxonMobil, one of the world’s largest publicly-traded oil and gas companies and chemical manufacturers, recently sued the California Attorney General and several environmental groups including the Sierra Club, San Francisco Baykeeper, Heal the Bay, and the Surfrider Foundation for defamation and business disparagement, among other things.
The suit came shortly after those same groups sued Exxon for deceiving the public about the recyclability of the company’s plastics polymers—the building blocks of single-use plastic. Exxon’s meritless SLAPP accuses the Attorney General and environmental groups of “using smear campaigns (and lawfare) for politics, publicity, and private gain.”
By filing SLAPP suits like this one, the corporations chiefly responsible for the global catastrophe of climate change are playing the victim and going on offense against small nonprofits dedicated to making our oceans clean and swimmable.
Even Trump himself has resorted to SLAPP tactics in a recent suit targeting an Iowa pollster for incorrect election prediction, which Trump deemed a “deceptive” and “corrupt practice” intended to “influence the outcome of the 2024 Presidential Election.”
The good news? As of January 2025, 35 states and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws on the books. These laws give courts an opportunity to dismiss SLAPP suits early on in the case before legal fees mount up. And many anti-SLAPP laws offer other protections like allowing defendants to quickly appeal a bad SLAPP ruling or get their litigation fees back once the SLAPP is tossed out.
Frustratingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, some of the very corporations using SLAPP as a sword are simultaneously invoking anti-SLAPP laws as a shield when they themselves come under legal scrutiny.
The result is a distorted legal landscape where the powerful can both play offense and defense—silencing critics through SLAPPs while immunizing themselves from legitimate public interest lawsuits filed against them.
FarmSTAND has experienced this firsthand. We represent a class of utility customers in a greenwashing suit against Northwest Natural Gas Company, whose Smart Energy program promised to “offset” customers’ natural gas emissions in exchange for a fee. In practice, Northwest Natural used the fees to fund manure digesters at industrial dairies like Threemile Canyon Farms, where over 61,000 cows produce between 9 and 16 million pounds of methane per year.
In a flagrant misuse of Oregon’s anti-SLAPP law, Northwest Natural Gas asserted that our consumer protection lawsuit is a SLAPP designed to silence its speech on matters of public concern. It’s safe to say our suit—challenging the company’s misleading representations about its commercial product—is far from a SLAPP.
This growing corporate boldness in shutting down activism through courts is closely linked to Trump’s relentless attacks on speech he disagrees with, including that of journalists, federal health officials, diplomats, teachers, climate scientists, and the LGBTQ+ community.
By detaining and deporting pro-Palestinian students, banning books and attacking learning opportunities in schools, libraries, and museums about America’s racist, sexist, and oppressive roots, ordering federal employees to cease communications on topics like diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental justice, and calling for the blacklisting of law firms and impeachment of judges that have checked Trump’s power, the President aims to deliberately suppress ideas that he considers threatening to his interests or the status quo.
Just like SLAPP suits and the misuse of anti-SLAPP safeguards, Trump’s political moves to chill speech threaten individual rights and democratic discourse itself. When people fear retaliation for engaging in advocacy, the public conversation suffers.
In the agriculture space, food system workers experiencing unsafe or unfair working conditions may shy away from speaking out against their employer or regulators. Environmental and animal welfare NGOs may self-censor, thinking twice before they criticize a company for dumping their factory farm waste in a nearby creek or violating animal cruelty laws. Journalists may refrain from the type of investigative reporting that has and will continue to shed a light on our deeply flawed food system. Leaders in the communities FarmSTAND partners with may avoid organizing. After the Greenpeace decision and Trump’s flurry of executive orders, who could blame them?
One thing remains true: you can count on FarmSTAND to show up in courtrooms and communities to fight for what’s right. We are working to protect citizens from governmental attacks on free speech and activism, to increase awareness about the rise in SLAPPs and the perverse use of anti-SLAPP laws, and to provide advocates with the legal support and solidarity networks necessary to resist these tactics.