The five-month shutdown of a North Dakota highway because of the protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline last year has led to a lawsuit by two members of the Standing rock Sioux tribe and a reservation priest.
They contend the closure violated their constitutional rights. The three filed suit in U.S. District Court against the state, Morton County and TigerSwan, the North Carolina-based company hired by Energy Transfer Partners to carry out security enforcement.
The suit also wants a judge to implement stricter rules for road closures and seeks class-action status, according to the Washington Post.
The legal move is the latest tribal protest of the pipeline that carries oil out of the Bakken. Thousands protested the pipeline in 2016 and 2017 and more than 760 arrests were made over a six-month period.
The highway is the main route between the reservation and Bismarck, the nearest large city. Plaintiffs allege that the shutdown was targeted directly at them and did not apply to pipeline workers.
“Defendants intentionally made travel to and from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the camps near the Cannonball River as unnecessarily unpleasant and dangerous as possible so as to deter (pipeline opponents), with whom they disagree, from lawfully pursuing their constitutional rights to travel, assemble, pray and express their viewpoints,” plaintiffs’ attorney Noah Smith-Drelich said in court documents.
Officials with the state attorney general’s office and the governor’s office said they hadn’t yet been served with the lawsuit and weren’t aware of it. Morton County declined to comment through its spokeswoman, citing the open case.
TigerSwan spokesman Wesley Fricks said the lawsuit’s claims that the company helped enforce the highway closure are “baseless” because “only the state and local authorities have the authority to close a road.”
“We further note the fact that Highway 1806 was first closed by the protesters themselves when they illegally constructed a blockade across the road,” he said.
The three plaintiffs are reservation businesswoman Cissy Thunderhawk, pipeline opponent Waste’Win Young and the Rev. John Floberg, priest at St. James’ Episcopal Church in Cannon Ball. They’re suing Morton County, its sheriff, the state’s governor and the governor at the time of the shutdown, and the heads of the state Transportation Department and the Highway Patrol.