The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), on behalf of the environmental magazine, Earth First! Journal, asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the corporation behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, which is intended to suppress activism.

On behalf of Energy Transfer Partners and Energy Transfer Equity, Kasowitz Benson Torres, the law firm which represents President Donald Trump, attempted to sue the movement, Earth First!, in August. They also sued Greenpeace and BankTrack.

But Earth First! is not an entity that can be sued, according to CCR senior staff attorney Shayana Kadidal. It is an idea or banner for a movement, like Black Lives Matter, and has no formal membership or leadership. It is non-hierarchical and has no “regularly constituted officers,” which is the “paradox of trying to make a social movement into a defendant in a lawsuit.”

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