In the past ten years, jurisdictions across the United States have witnessed an explosion of fossil-fuel-industry-backed laws targeting anti-pipeline and anti-critical infrastructure protestors. In passing these laws, state legislators throughout the country have sought to criminally punish activists who dissent against the construction of infrastructure sites atop their homes and in their neighborhoods. These activists resist a trend in which local governments designate their communities as “sacrifice zones.” In these areas, local governments allow companies to build polluting industries and facilities that subject residents to severe health and safety risks. Because these infrastructure sites disproportionately displace and harm communities of color, some have deemed this practice “the new Jim Crow” and have argued that it functions as a relic of slavery. In cracking down on these communities’ opposition to the creation of sacrifice zones, state legislatures and the oil and gas industry silence Black- and Indigenous-led racial justice movements across the country.
Using dissent in sacrifice zones as an example, this Note argues that modern suppression of racial justice advocacy hearkens back to a long tradition of silencing movements that promote racial equality. This repressive practice traces its roots back to pre-abolition times. As this Note explicates, the Framers of the Thirteenth Amendment (which formally abolished slavery) sought to curtail such speech- silencing efforts. Thus, suppression of racial justice advocacy—and specifically, suppression of anti-sacrifice zone advocacy—should be considered a “badge and incident of slavery” violative of the Thirteenth Amendment.
This Note offers two Thirteenth Amendment avenues for challenging what this Note calls “sacrifice zone speech suppression,” a subset of anti-protest speech suppression aimed at silencing dissent in sacrifice zones specifically. First and foremost, this Note proposes a litigation pathway, and second, it proposes a legislative pathway. In proposing these solutions, this Note shares the hope of the many activists who have spent years, decades, and centuries fighting for an end to the legacies of slavery: the conviction that, in the words of Bill Quigley, “justice is possible.”
