SD Agrees To Drop Draconian "Riot Boosting" Pipeline Law In Face Of ACLU, Native Opposition

In a major victory for Indigenous groups, local environmentalists, and free speech advocates, the Governor and Attorney General of South Dakota on Thursday submitted a settlement agreement that would stop enforcement of key provisions in the state’s “riot-boosting” law, which legislators passed earlier this year after lobbying from law enforcement groups and TransCanada, the company behind the Keystone XL pipeline.

In the settlement, the state of South Dakota has agreed to not enforce provisions of the law that dole out felonies and create costly fines for people who “encourage” riots without participating. Like other states, South Dakota law defines “riot” broadly enough to include some forms of peaceful protest.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem described the “riot-boosting” law passed earlier this year as a “next-generation pipeline funding model” designed to “address issues caused by out-of-state rioters…that have attacked nearby projects,” alluding to protests in North Dakota that impeded construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016. The “riot-boosting” law would have allowed the state to sue people and organizations who encourage such protests, even if they never join one, or live in other states.

In a suit filed in March with the US District Court in South Dakota, the ACLU (representing local farmers, ranchers, and Indigenous groups) held that this law would “chill” free speech and peaceful protests by creating a heavy deterrent—penalties of up to three times the cost of damages incurred—for any statement that can be so much as linked to behavior the state construes as violent. South Dakota’s agreement to not enforce these laws comes on the heels of a federal judge issuing a temporary injunction that blocked provisions of the “riot-boosting” law. In his decision, the judge wrote that the law was likely unconstitutional, and suggested that Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference “could have been liable” had a “riot-boosting” law existed during their protests in Birmingham, Alabama.

EDIT

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/10/south-dakota-pipeline-protest-riotboost-standing-rock/