By A North Dakota jury has delivered a staggering verdict against Greenpeace, ordering the environmental advocacy group to pay $667 million in damages to Energy Transfer, the company behind the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline.
At the heart of the case was Greenpeace’s role in the 2016 protests at Standing Rock, where thousands of demonstrators gathered to oppose the pipeline’s construction, alleging that the construction would potentially contaminate the water supply of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe despite studies showing it wouldn’t. While Greenpeace has long insisted that it merely supported Indigenous-led resistance and engaged in nonviolent advocacy, Energy Transfer accused the group of orchestrating a calculated campaign of misinformation and incitement that damaged the company’s reputation and financial standing, reported The New York Times.
The verdict was a major blow to the environmental organization. Greenpeace had said that Energy Transfer’s claimed damages, in the range of $300 million, would be enough to put the group out of business in the United States. The jury on Wednesday awarded far more than that.
Greenpeace said it would appeal. The group has maintained that it played only a minor part in demonstrations led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. It has portrayed the lawsuit as an attempt to stifle oil-industry critics.
The nine-person jury in the Morton County courthouse in Mandan, N.D., about 45 minutes north of where the protests took place, returned the verdict after roughly two days of deliberations.
The demonstrators gathered on and around the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, arguing that the pipeline cut through sacred land and could endanger the local water supply. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued to stop the project, and members of other tribes, environmentalists and celebrities were among the many who flocked to the rural area, including two figures who are now members of Mr. Trump’s cabinet: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
As they always do with the left, the protests eventually erupted into acts of vandalism and violence and alienated the surrounding communities.
For environmental groups, the verdict signals a dangerous precedent, claimed Greenpeace. The group’s USA senior legal counsel, Deepa Padmanabha, framed the ruling as a direct assault on free speech and the right to peaceful protest, warning that the decision could embolden corporations to use litigation as a tool to silence dissent. “We should all be concerned about the future of the First Amendment,” she stated, “and lawsuits like this aimed at destroying our rights to peaceful protest and free speech.”
Energy Transfer, however, framed the outcome as a victory for law and order. “This win is really for the people of Mandan and throughout North Dakota who had to live through the daily harassment and disruptions caused by the protesters,” company spokeswoman Vicki Granado said. The company has long maintained that its lawsuit was not about stifling free speech but about holding Greenpeace accountable for spreading falsehoods and encouraging unlawful activity.
Beyond the immediate financial implications—Greenpeace USA reported just $40 million in revenue in 2023, a fraction of the damages awarded—the ruling could have a chilling effect on direct-action climate activism. Legal experts suggest that while environmentalists will continue to speak out against fossil fuel expansion, the risk of financial ruin may deter groups from supporting protests that actively disrupt infrastructure projects.
The organization has vowed to appeal, but the path forward remains uncertain. Meanwhile, Greenpeace International has launched an anti-intimidation case against Energy Transfer in the Netherlands, seeking to leverage Europe’s antagonism against the United States to recover its legal costs.
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