(iPoster) Climate Chains: Free Speech Law and Anti-Extractive Protests in the US

• In Event: Poster Session: Science, Technology, and Environmental Politics

Abstract

Why do anti-extractive protests occur more frequently, or face greater repression, in some states rather than others? In the United States, environmental activists use protests to denounce local pollution and global climate change damages from the extractive sector, oppose specific oil, gas, mining, and logging projects, and advocate for regulation. In response, extractive firms have retaliated to intimidate and punish protesters, filing strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) and lobbying for laws that criminalize disruptive protests and those near “critical infrastructure” such as pipelines. I argue that free speech protections and restrictions for activists established by, respectively, state anti-SLAPP and anti-protest laws shape dynamics of anti-extractive protests and repression. I test this argument on a novel dataset of all anti-extractive protests in US states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, from 2017 to 2024. My results suggest that state legislatures (and the courts) shift the balance of climate politics between activist and extractive interests when they enact (and interpret) free speech law.

Author

• Timothy Daniel Arvan, University of Michigan