What is a SLAPP?
SLAPP = Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation
SLAPPs are Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation. These damaging suits chill free speech and healthy debate by targeting those who communicate with their government or speak out on issues of public interest.
SLAPPs are used to silence and harass critics by forcing them to spend money to defend these baseless suits. SLAPP filers don’t go to court to seek justice. Rather, SLAPPS are intended to intimidate those who disagree with them or their activities by draining the target’s financial resources.
SLAPPs are effective because even a meritless lawsuit can take years and many thousands of dollars to defend. To end or prevent a SLAPP, those who speak out on issues of public interest frequently agree to muzzle themselves, apologize, or “correct” statements.
SLAPPs are used by those in positions of power who want to silence and disturb key-elements of democracy, such as journalism and advocacy. By filing multiple lawsuits against critical voices, they waste time and resources.
https://www.thejournal.ie/eu-passes-anti-slapp-legislation-6311411-Feb2024/
Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE)
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While Texaco owners Chevron want to silence Steven Donziger, a much larger corporate-funded-travesty of justice in happening that will have dreadful effects on our children, wildlife and future generations – the oil industry wants to kill off GREENPEACE.
And now Big Oil is trying to force Greenpeace out of business with a $300 million SLAPP harassment lawsuit that is about to go to trial in a rural county in North Dakota.
Kelcey Warren – billionaire owner of the Texas pipeline company Energy Transfer Partner is a close ally of President Trump. Warren is furious at Greenpeace because the group helped to support Indigenous-led protests of his pipeline at Standing Rock in 2016-2017. He is trying to use the courts to force Greenpeace to shut down.
We must defend the defenders against the greed and criminality of the fossil fuel industry. We must stand behind GREENPEACE – for the past 40 years GREENPEACE have put their necks on the line and their lives at risk and have stood up to some of the most potentially-damaging oil exploration projects on the planet on our behalf.
I’ve been doing this work for decades. I believe this is one of the most terrifying threats I’ve ever seen to the rule of the law and the environment.
I’m so peeved about this that I am organizing a group of prominent lawyers to travel to North Dakota to monitor the Greenpeace trial and call out this travesty of justice.”
We must defend the defenders against the greed and criminality of the fossil fuel industry. We must stand behind GREENPEACE.
For the past 40 years GREENPEACE have put their necks on the line and their lives at risk and have stood up to some of the most potentially-damaging oil exploration projects on the planet on our behalf.
Among those joining Steven in his efforts are some of the top civil rights lawyers in the United States. They include Marty Garbus, who has represented Mandela, Ellsberg, Havel, and Cesar Chavez over his six-decade career; Natali Segovia, one of the leading Indigenous rights lawyers in the United States; and Jeanne Mirer, the President of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers.
Steven and his team are also going to be backed by students from Georgetown and Columbia law schools, who will provide critical support.
Strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) are brought by powerful and wealthy entities against public watchdogs in an effort to compel them to withhold or remove critical speech, even if it is accurate and in the public interest. By driving information out of the public domain, SLAPPs make it extremely difficult to hold power to account. Put simply, SLAPPs weaponise the law in order to harass and punish those speaking out in the public interest. They threaten not only our freedom of information, but our human rights, our rule of law, and our democracies.
While the draft bill itself primarily addresses defamation, it does contain provisions related to SLAPPs and it must be acknowledged that Ireland’s existing defamation laws facilitate SLAPPs. While the use of this tactic to undermine criticism and evade scrutiny has proliferated globally, the Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe’s 2022 report identified Ireland as a jurisdiction of concern in the EU alongside Croatia and Malta.
The network is satisfied that the amendments put forward in our submission would serve to substantially improve the bill beyond its current draft, particularly with regard to putting an end to SLAPPs. Many of the recommendations of the network are drawn from Anti-SLAPP work undertaken by member organisations in the UK and EU.