Suit battles controversial state law that’s part of a ‘nationwide crackdown’ on pipeline protests

The latest headlines from our reporters across the US sent straight to your inbox each weekday Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US Your briefing on the latest headlines from across the US SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Because protecting land, water, and the right to protest is a fight we can’t afford to lose.” The suit, from the Center for Constitutional Rights, challenges a 2018 revision to Louisiana’s critical infrastructure law on behalf of a group including property owners, activists, and a journalist who faced arrest under the law. The change, backed in part by the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil and Gas Association during a wave of protests against the Bayou Bridge oil pipeline, made it a felony punishable by up to five years in prison to remain on the “premises” of critical infrastructure, including pipelines, if an owner or “custodian” of the infrastructure told them to leave. The suit argues that the law makes it a vague crime to protest near Louisiana’s 125,000-plus mile network of gas and chemical pipelines Among the plaintiffs in the challenge, which was rejected in lower federal court, are a group of landowners who were arrested by police hired by a pipeline company as the property owners protested a section of pipeline that a state court found was improperly built through their own land. Activists protested the pipeline, which was completed in 2019, arguing it would further exacerbate climate change, Louisiana’s coastal shoreline loss, and health issues in the state’s industrial “Cancer Alley.” Across the country, fossil fuel groups and sympathetic legislators have helped pass at least 22 laws restricting protests near critical infrastructure, including pipelines, since the high-profile, indigenous-led 2016 Standing Rock protests against the Dakota Access pipeline, according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law.