Law Commons^™

The Big Chill: Are Public Participation Rights Being Slapp-Ed?, Rachel E. Deming

Pace Environmental Law Review

This article focuses on the Petition Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and addresses a confounding situation caused by Supreme Court precedents that give greater protection to persons who engage in illegal business practices than to citizens who petition their governments. This dichotomy is especially detrimental to environmental protection.

The crux of the conflict lies in which standard courts should use to determine whether the petitioning activity is protected: the subjective Free Speech standard grafted onto Petition Clause activities or the objective standard initially developed by the Supreme Court for petition activities in antitrust cases. The result …