ca indep petrol ass CIPA

disambiguation see main

https://www.desmog.com/2022/10/07/slapp-lawsuits-exxon-chemrisk-dapl-climate-change-raskin/

 Emily Sanders

In 2018, Krystal Two Bulls received notice that she was being sued for criminal conspiracy.

Two Bulls, who is Oglala Lakota and North Cheyenne, has been organizing for environmental justice for much of her life. She was raised on the North Cheyenne Indian Reservation of Lame Deer, Montana, part of a community that had resisted coal developments for nearly 40 years. In 2016, she helped defeat Arch Coal’s plans to build a massive strip mining operation on the reservation’s border. The project would’ve been one of the largest coal mines in the United States.

Later that same year, Two Bulls received an urgent call for assistance from land and water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, who were working to oppose the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline, which transports crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois.

When Two Bulls arrived, the conflict between protestors and local police was escalating. Her auntie, Dr. Sara Jumping Eagle, had recently been arrested after standing in the path of a bulldozer set to dig up human remains at an ancestral burial site. Two Bulls spent three-and-a-half months supporting and sustaining the camp — handling basic logistics like providing protestors with food, warm clothing, and other necessities — all in the face of violence by state police. She then helped to launch the No DAPL Solidarity Campaign, a global movement to back the Indigenous opposition to the pipeline.

It wasn’t until a year after camp was shut down that Two Bulls, who came to North Dakota on her own dime and left in debt, found out she was being sued for millions of dollars by the pipeline developer, Energy Transfer Partners. The charges were brought under the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Practices (RICO) Act,a law originally designed to prosecute the mafia. The company claimed that through her “calls to action,” including a statement on Greenpeace’s website asking “all people from around the world to take action” and “come stand with us” against the Dakota Access pipeline, Two Bulls and others had conspired to interfere with Energy Transfer’s business operations and engaged in organized crime. The individuals and groups’ opposition, the company claimed, was defamatory and cost key investments in its pipeline.

In 2017, The Intercept reported on documents leaked from former personnel at an international security firm, TigerSwan, revealing that Energy Transfer had paid the firm to use military-style surveillance and infiltration tactics to gather information that could be deployed in a RICO lawsuit against the anti-pipeline activists. 

Two Bulls is just one of many victims of the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs— strategic lawsuits against public participation — to silence and intimidate its critics. A report released last month by legal advocacy nonprofit EarthRights International identified 152 instances of legal and judicial harassment by fossil fuel corporations to suppress dissent in the United States over the past 10 years, including 93 SLAPP lawsuits.

Just this week, a California oil industry trade association paid nearly $650,000 in fees to the city of Los Angelesand several environmental advocacy groups the company had targeted in court for years following the city’s implementation of new environmental safety requirements for drilling applicants. After declaring bankruptcy, the California Independent Petroleum Association was allowed to pay only a fraction of a judgment initially awarded to the city and groups by a trial court that ruled the lawsuit was a SLAPP.

“With the strengthening of our movements, the revelation of how long the fossil fuel industry has been aware of how their practices impact and contribute to climate change, and the rise of legal cases against oil and gas corporations, these companies are becoming more desperate to silence the voices of their critics,” said Deepa Padmanabha, deputy general counsel at Greenpeace USA.

A wide range of concerned groups, from community organizers to members of Congress, are taking up the fight against SLAPPs. Last month, the House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing to expose the fossil fuel industry’s use of SLAPPs and its backing of bills to criminalize protest. The committee’s witnesses, including Padmanabha and others, explained that corporations were using these tactics to suppress activists’ ability to freely voice dissent.

The day after the hearing, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the subcommittee chairman, introduced the SLAPP Protection Act of 2022 — the first federal legislation that would “establish a procedure to dismiss, punish, and deter strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Advocates say the bill could create a sorely needed protection for individuals and community groups who speak out against fossil fuel infrastructure, and an important safeguard for free speech at large.

According to EarthRights International, the proposed legislation would provide a federal mechanism for SLAPP suits to be quickly identified and dismissed while balancing the rights of plaintiffs and defendants. The bill would also force those bringing SLAPP suits to pay their opponents’ legal fees if the lawsuit is proven to have abusive intent.

Advocacy organizations are also tackling the issue. EarthRights is a member of the Protect the Protest coalition, an initiative created in response to the rise of SLAPP suits. “If a corporation can sue a nonprofit organization out of business for criticizing its activities, then that’s extremely dangerous,” Kirk Herbertson, senior policy advisor at EarthRights International, said.

About a year after Energy Transfer filed its lawsuit against Two Bulls and others, a district court judge in North Dakota dismissed the case, denying the RICO claims with prejudice — meaning the company could not refile those claims.

RICO claims, which can triple the amount of damages sought in a SLAPP suit, can be financially devastating — even for a larger, well-resourced organization like Greenpeace USA,which was named in the original suit. While Energy Transfer’s RICO claims against the organization have been dismissed, the pipeline company filed a second lawsuit in North Dakota state court, which is scheduled for trial in June 2023. In its current case, which also names Two Bulls as a defendant, Energy Transfer argues that Greenpeace USA conspired with others to defame, trespass, and interfere with business relationships, among many other charges.

Energy Transfer did not respond to a request for comment.

“Companies are becoming more desperate to silence the voices of their critics”– Deepa Padmanabha

Fighting these lawsuits not only takes vast amounts of money, but also time and energy. Padmanabha said that since mid-2016, her career has been almost entirely dedicated to advocating against corporate lawfare — corporations’ use of the legal system to attack opponents — preventing her from engaging more in the dire work needed to prevent climate catastrophe.

“The next decade is so critical in our fight against climate change. And if we didn’t have to deal with these lawsuits, we would really be putting every penny and every minute we have into fighting the existential threat of climate change,” Padmanabha said, adding that they are also intended to intimidate and deter individuals and lesser-resourced, smaller groups from speaking out.

Karen Savage was working in Massachusetts as a middle-school math teacher when she got hit with a SLAPP suit. In 2013, she and another environmental activist, Cherri Foytlin, wrote an unpaid article for the Huffington Post about a so-called independent study fromscientific consulting firm ChemRisk. The study had claimed that there was no connection between chemicals released during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the serious health problems reported by cleanup workers and coastal residents in its aftermath.

As their reporting revealed, ChemRisk — a company with a long history of working with polluters, including defendant PG&E in the infamous Erin Brockovich case — produced “science” on behalf of BP that the oil major could use to defend itself from liability in court.

After the article was published, the Huffington Post received an immediate request from the company to retract it, which they forwarded on to Cherri Foytlin. (In a note on her Facebook page, Foytlin told ChemRisk to “kiss my derriere.”)

Foytlin’s Facebook post, along with many other social media posts from the two writers, appeared in a defamation suit filed against them by ChemRisk in New York state. The company claimed their article contained falsehoods — though, according to Savage, ChemRisk couldn’t explain what those falsehoods were — and that as long as it was kept online, the article would “continue to do substantial harm to ChemRisk’s reputation.”

“Basically what they wanted to do was shut us up,” Savage told me. “It was an intimidation tactic.”

With pro-bono representation, Savage and Foytlin were able to get the suit dismissed in New York. Within two weeks, the company refiled in Massachusetts, where Savage lived. At one point, she said, the company’s lawyers even attempted to serve her in her classroom while she was teaching.

Cardno ChemRisk, the parent company of ChemRisk, did not respond to a request for comment.

The case was eventually dismissed under the state’s anti-SLAPP laws, and ChemRisk was forced to pay Savage and Foytlin’s attorney’s fees. Savage said she believes that ChemRisk never sued them in Louisiana, where Foytlin lived, because of the three states, Louisiana’s anti-SLAPP laws were the strongest, and the suit would’ve been dismissed faster and with greater consequences for the company.

That tactic of searching for the most favorable court, called forum shopping, is something Raskin’s anti-SLAPP statute would address by creating a standard applicable across the United States. At present, 32 states and the District of Columbia have anti-SLAPP laws, yet they have varying degrees of efficacy. And while the fate of a federal bill could depend on the outcome of midterm elections, most state anti-SLAPP laws have passed with bipartisan support.

Savage — who has since become a journalist and haswritten for DeSmog about being arrested by pipeline security while reporting — said she hopes Raskin’s bill would help put an end to this tactic. “If you know the truth, and you’ve got factual backup, and someone comes at you, you can’t back down on that,” Savage said. “The whole reason they’re coming at you is because they also know that you have the truth.”

While the fossil fuel industry works to stamp out the speech of environmental advocates on the one hand, it is now arguing that its climate denial is protected speech on the other. At the same time that Raskin held his hearing into the fossil fuel industry’s assault on the First Amendment, the House Natural Resources Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held a separate hearing to examine how public relations firms market climate disinformation and delay action on behalf of Big Oil. In that hearing, chaired by Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA), Republicans and their witness argued that the committee was attacking the corporations’ right to free speech.

“Taken together, the two [hearings] are a perfect illustration of the industry’s First Amendment strategy: expand free speech for corporations, curb it for citizens,” Amy Westervelt recently wrote in The Intercept. The fossil fuel industry, she explained, has been developing the argument that its public statements on climate policy are protected speech since the late 1960s, all while working to expand the right of corporations to buy influence over politics behind the scenes.

In a paradoxical twist, fossil fuel companies are even attempting to wield existing anti-SLAPP laws to shield themselves from legal accountability. After a Massachusetts court ruled that Attorney General Maura Healey’s climate fraud lawsuit against Exxon could proceed in state court, the oil giant told the state’s supreme court that the case was actually a conspiracy to silence Exxon’s views on climate policy in violation of the state’s anti-SLAPP statute.But so far, the idea that Exxon’s fraud is protected free speech has not gone over well with judges.

“We have seen that the industry is trying to build up this argument around a conspiracy against them, and it’s coming up in things like anti-SLAPP motions in courts. But they have continued to fail in that effort so far,” Herbertson of EarthRights International said. Raskin’s newly proposed federal legislation, he said, is clearly and explicitly designed to be used by real peopleand organizations that have been victim to SLAPP suits,and will be harder for corporations to use in their own defense.

But if you ask Padmanabha of Greenpeace, the industry’s tactics are on thin ice. “There is this recognition and an increasing awareness that speech should not be bought,” she said. “And I think that the [Oversight Civil Rights and Civil Liberties] hearing and the bill that followed it are really just emblematic examples of how these attempts to control the narrative are crumbling.”

Emily Sanders writes ExxonKnews, a newsletter covering climate accountability and the oil and gas industry. She is editorial lead at the Center for Climate Integrity, and is based in New York City. This piece was co-published by DeSmog and ExxonKnews, a project of the Center for Climate Integrity.

ref 1

https://www.desmog.com/2017/04/03/youth-color-lawsuit-los-angeles-drilling-discrimination-oil-industry/

apr 2017

los Angeles is a city built on oil, and even today more than a thousand derricks still pump it from the shallow reserves beneath the city. While some oil wells are camouflaged behind colorfully painted towers or bland beige structures resembling office buildings, many of them draw up crude oil in the open, surprisingly close to homes, stores, restaurants, schools, and churches.

“Every time I go to school,” 18-year-old Brandon Molina told DeSmog, “I walk by these oil drilling sites. They’re around my school. So, it’s something that I see every day.”

In LA, the number of residents living less than a mile from an oil well is in the tens of thousands. But how close you live to a drilling site may depend on the color of your skin and socioeconomic status, placing communities of color disproportionately at risk, according to a lawsuit brought by three LA youth groups against the City of LA.

And while the City took steps to address the complaints by amending its drilling application process and ultimately settled with the youth groups in September 2016, both parties are currently facing a counter lawsuit.

This legal battle has been brought by a state-based oil and gas trade group, the California Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), which argues that after a judge granted it permission to participate in the youth lawsuit settlement discussions, it was allegedly blocked from doing so.

Youth of Color Take on Oil Drilling in LA

[pix oil by houses]

molina is a freshman attending community college in the LA neighborhood of Wilmington. He is a youth organizer with one of the groups filing the original lawsuit, Youth for Environmental Justice, a program of the California-focused nonprofit Communities for a Better Environment.

These youth groups, which also include the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and youth members of theCenter for Biological Diversity, first filed suit against the City of LA in November 2015.

The lawsuit claimed that the City’s pattern of reviewing — and “rubberstamping” — applications to open new oil wells and drill again in old ones was not only in violation of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which requires environmental impact reviews and public input on projects which could cause environmental harm, it also unfairly put the health of communities of color at risk.

Instead of each application undergoing a case-by-case review of the potential environmental, health, and safety impacts, the City of LA was regularly granting exemptions from these reviews “as rule of law,” according to Gladys Limón, an attorney for Communities for a Better Environment.

And, as outlined in the lawsuit:

“Drilling sites in South Los Angeles and Wilmington — neighborhoods where the vast majority of residents are black and Latino — are on average hundreds of feet closer to schools, playgrounds, and parks than drilling sites in neighborhoods such as West Los Angeles and Wilshire with larger numbers of white residents.”

Limón says that this information surfaced after communities in areas affected by expanded drilling activity started talking to each other and realized “the same sorts of patterns that they were experiencing were true for other communities.” At that point, her organization began digging through city files and investigating whether that might be the case.

“Sure enough, these patterns did emerge,” Limón told DeSmog.

And when the city placed certain conditions on the drilling activities, such as enclosing the derricks in sound-proof structures or using electric drilling rigs instead of more polluting diesel rigs, that’s when Limón says the pattern of discrimination arose. “We believe there were inferior conditions that were required in communities of color,” she said.

Getting to Know the Drill

In Wilmington, near the community where Molina lives, a single drilling company, Warren E&P, opened 540 new oil wells in the last couple decades, and it’s not the only company operating there.

The community is afflicted by one of the highest cancer rates in the southern part of the state. Oil and gas drilling is associated with pollution known to have numerous health impacts, ranging from asthma and headaches to a higher risk of cancer in children. Some of these wells overlook a little league baseball field.

Molina has a personal stake in how oil drilling happens in LA. Not only does it occur in his communities, but he has suffered from asthma since he was six years old, with several attacks severe enough to land him in the hospital. His experience learning about the drilling activities in his communities and being a part of the lawsuit fighting for stricter enforcement of protections surrounding those activities was empowering, a feeling he hopes to transfer to other people of color like him.

“Not many people in our community know about the issue that we are facing,” Molina said. “Honestly, being part of this really did open my eyes to see what is going on in my community, and it made me feel even more motivated to do something for my community.”

City Takes Closer Look at Drilling Applications

On September 19, 2016, the Los Angeles Department of City Planning issued a memorandum amending the oil and gas drilling application process and setting new guidelines for the way it reviews those applications.

The application now includes an environmental assessment form that Limón says should enable the Planning Department to evaluate potential environmental impacts of each project. The City says these moves are meant to bring it into line with state law.

“We’re pleased to have worked with the community and Planning Department to advance environmental justice by better protecting the health of our residents near oil facilities,” Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer said in a statement.

These changes include expanded opportunities for public participation, and are an effort “to fully recognize that people living and working in proximity to oil and gas operations have a substantial interest in participating in the review process for these projects,” according to a statement from the City.

Oil Industry Follows (Law)Suit

Sabrina Lockhart, communications director for CIPA, has a different take on the City’s memo. “It’s disappointing that the rules were created without input from the entities that must comply with them,” she told DeSmog.

Lockhart says that the petroleum association believes the City’s new guidelines for drilling applications, issued a week and a half ahead of the City Council vote approving the settlement, were a condition of settling, and that CIPA’s only recourse for not having a say in those guidelines’ development was to sue both the City and youth groups.

“Even though the settlement itself doesn’t name it, right at the same time the settlement was reached, the city announced these new regulations,” said Lockhart. “We are fighting in the courts because we believe that it unilaterally and improperly overrides state law.”

Limón, however, considers the countersuit a retaliatory attempt to silence youth of color and “bully” the City. She also provided DeSmog court documents showing email exchanges between the youth groups’ lawyers and CIPA’s, inviting the petroleum association to discuss its position and potential settlement.

“The oil industry is not used to communities of color standing up against policies and practice that one, give it free rein to pollute communities and two, challenge their profits,” said Limón. “In this case, the youth of color courageously challenged those practices and they prevailed.”

CIPA does not appear to have accepted these offers to discuss settlement, instead pursuing legal actions attempting to access all previous information related to settlement discussions between the City and youth groups.

So far, the courts have not granted CIPA this request and are currently examining whether its suit could be considered retaliatory under state law.

Meanwhile, Molina continues to walk past oil derricks on his way to community college in Wilmington. He described the countersuit by the petroleum association as “just wrong.”

“That is another thing that just opened my eyes to see how the world works,” he said.

ref 2

For Immediate Release, October 3, 2022

California Oil Group Pays Fees to Advocacy Groups It Harassed, But Dodges Multimillion Dollar Judgment

LOS ANGELES— The California Independent Petroleum Association, an oil industry trade association, paid the city of Los Angeles, Youth for Environmental Justice, South Central Youth Leadership Coalition, and the Center for Biological Diversity nearly $650,000 as part of a bankruptcy reorganization plan today, after years of litigation.

The bankruptcy allowed the petroleum association to avoid paying in full a court-ordered $2.3 million judgment for bringing a retaliatory SLAPP suit— “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” — against the groups and the city. The SLAPP suit forced the groups into years of unnecessary litigation until a judge determined that the suit was intended to harass the groups after they won neighborhood oil drilling protections in Los Angeles in 2015.

The petroleum association’s members have included oil giants Chevron, Aera Energy and California Resources Corporation.

On Sept. 20, a California bankruptcy court approved the final plan under which the groups received a fraction of the judgment awarded by the trial court.

“The idea that Big Oil can’t afford to pay its due judgment to kids and conservationists is a bad punchline to a terrible joke,” said Maya Golden-Krasner, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Justice would have the industry ponying up the millions it owes for harassing and intimidating youth groups fighting for clean air. But greasing the legal system to avoid penalties is about as predictable as the climate damage from their dirty fossil fuels.”

“No matter what small fraction they’re paying us, the oil industry’s intimidation tactics failed,” said Nalleli Cobo, co-founder of the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition. “People power is winning in California. We’re ready to get on with protecting communities from toxic oil pollution."

In 2015 the groups sued the city of Los Angeles for rubber-stamping oil projects in communities of color. Both sides reached a settlement in 2016 after the city adopted new requirements for drilling applications to protect vulnerable communities and ensure compliance with state environmental review rules.

The petroleum association sued the city and youth and environmental groups andforced years of litigation over a baseless SLAPP suit. In 2019 a California appeals court dismissed the petroleum association’s suit as a meritless attack on the groups, leading to the judgment that the association must pay the legal fees the groups incurred fighting it.A judge determined in July 2021 that the suit was intended to harass the groups after they won neighborhood oil drilling protections in Los Angeles.

“The industry should pay for the bullying that landed them in trouble,” said Alison Hahm, an attorney at Communities for a Better Environment’s Youth for Environmental Justice. “There’s something wrong with bankruptcy law that shields well-resourced private interests from responsibility, shifting financial burdens to communities already harmed by polluters and lobbyists. We’ll continue to fight for a safer, healthier future without fossil fuels.”

Despite its bankruptcy, the petroleum association has continued to spend hundreds of thousands on lobbying this year to oppose legislation aimed at protecting communities from oil industry pollution.

[https://cal-access.sos.ca.gov/Lobbying/Employers/Detail.aspx?id=1146650&session=2021&view=activity

2021-2022 LEGISLATIVE SESSION

...

shannon grove

F635

CA STATE LEGISLATURE RE: AB 64,AB 71,AB 352,AB 353,AB 377,AB 766,AB 879,AB 1001,AB 1218,AB 1395,AB 1400,AB 1463,AB 1 -

611,AB 1634,AB 1657,AB 1658,AB 1676,AB 1694,AB 1749,AB 1957,AB 1966,AB 2204,AB 2219,AB 2241,AB 2257,AB 2360,AB 2362,AB -

2442,AB 2447,AB 2532,AB 2578,AB 2605,AB 2609,AB 2649,AB 2673,AB 2674,AB 2700,AB 2743,AB 2793,AB 2802,AB 2816,AB 2852,AB

2886,AB 2931,AB 2944,ACA 1,AJR 24,AJR 25,SB 25,SB 30,SB 31,SB 32,SB 67,SB 260,SB 342,SB 351,SB 905,SB 953,SB 1030,SB 109 -

5,SB 1101,SB 1125,SB 1132,SB 1136,SB 1173,SB 1217,SB 1220,SB 1221,SB 1295,SB 1301,SB 1314,SB 1319,SB 1347,SB 1391,SB 14 -

23; CALIFORNIA NATURAL RESOURCES AGENCY, DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION, CALIFORNIA GEOLOGIC ENERGY MANAG -

EMENT DIVISION (CALGEM) RE: CALGEM OVERSIGHT OF THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRY,INCLUDING,BUT NOT LIMITED TO,UND -

ERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL (UIC),AQUIFER EXEMPTIONS (AE),CRUDE OIL PRODUCTION REGULATIONS,

HEALTH AND SAFETY RULEMAKING PROCESS; STATE WATER RESOURCES CONTROL BOARD (SWRCB),CENTRAL VALLEY WATER BOARD ( -

CVWB) RE: UNDERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL (UIC); AQUIFER EXEMPTIONS (AE); WETLANDS/DREDGE AND FILL,CENTRAL

VALLEY SALINITY ALTERNATIVES FOR LONG-TERM SUSTAINABILITY (CVSALTS) BASIN PLAN AMENDMENT (BPA),PRODUCED -

WATER FOR CROP IRRIGATION,ANNUAL WATER QUALITY PERMIT FEE,INCLUDING POND SURCHARGE; CALIFORNIA AIR RES -

OURCES BOARD (CARB) RE: 2022 SCOPING PLAN UPDATE; GREENHOUSE GAS REDUCTION PROGRAMS,INCLUDING THE INN -

OVATIVE CRUDE METHODS PROGRAM,LOW CARBON FUEL STANDARD,AIR QUALITY ISSUES AND CARBON INTENSITY REDU -

CTION PROJECTS AND OPPORTUNITIES

REPORTABLE ATTENDEES THAT BENEFITED FROM LODGING AND MEALS: ASSEMBLYMEMBERS RUDY SALAS, MIKE GIPSON, -

CHAD MAYES, PATRICK O'DONNELL,VINCE FONG; SENATORS STEVEN BRADFORD, MELISSA HURTADO AND BRIAN JONES

REPORTABLE ATTENDEES THAT BENEFITED FROM MEALS - ASSEMBLYMEMBERS LAURIE DAVIES, JANET NGUYEN AND SENAtor josh newman

]

The petroleum association supported a referendum in Ventura County to overturn a law that would have increased environmental oversight of oil and gas drilling. An association board member is behind a statewide referendum to try to repeal S.B. 1137, California’s landmark legislation establishing setbacks that would prohibit new permits for oil activities within 3,200 feet of homes, schools, hospitals and other sensitive sites.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2017/04/03/youth-color-lawsuit-los-angeles-drilling-discrimination-oil-industry

After Los Angeles Youth Sued City for Discriminatory Drilling Practices, the Oil Industry Sued Back

By Ashley Braun • Monday, April 3, 2017 - 03:58

Boy playing basketball at Beverly Hills High School next to a covered oil derrick

Los Angeles is a city built on oil, and even today more than a thousand derricks still pump it from the shallow reserves beneath the city. While some oil wells are camouflaged behind colorfully painted towers or bland beige structures resembling office buildings, many of them draw up crude oil in the open, surprisingly close to homes, stores, restaurants, schools, and churches.

“Every time I go to school,” 18-year-old Brandon Molina told DeSmog, “I walk by these oil drilling sites. They’re around my school. So, it’s something that I see every day.”

In LA, the number of residents living less than a mile from an oil well is in the tens of thousands. But how close you live to a drilling site may depend on the color of your skin and socioeconomic status, placing communities of color disproportionately at risk, according to a lawsuit brought by three LA youth groups against the City of LA.

And while the City took steps to address the complaints by amending its drilling application process and ultimately settled with the youth groups in September 2016, both parties are currently facing a counter lawsuit.

This legal battle has been brought by a state-based oil and gas trade group, theCalifornia Independent Petroleum Association (CIPA), which argues that after a judge granted it permission to participate in the youth lawsuit settlement discussions, it was allegedly blocked from doing so.

Molina is a freshman attending community college in the LA neighborhood of Wilmington. He is a youth organizer with one of the groups filing the original lawsuit, Youth for Environmental Justice, a program of the California-focused nonprofitCommunities for a Better Environment.

These youth groups, which also include the South Central Youth Leadership Coalition and youth members of the Center for Biological Diversity, first filed suit against the City of LA in November 2015.