Federal Judge Orders State To Halt Investigation Into Environmental Groups

In September Attorney General JB McCuskey subpoenaed West Virginia Rivers Coalition and 350.Org as part of a broader investigation into many of the state’s leading environmental groups.  

The orders sought ten years of the organizations’ internal documents “concerning its public statements on climate and energy, its internal deliberations about those statements, its requests for donations, the organizations that have funded its work and the amounts they gave, the organizations it has paid, the officers, directors, staff, and board members it shares with renewable energy entities, its dealings with coalitions and other advocacy organizations on energy permitting and regulation in West Virginia, and its submissions to regulatory agencies.” 

Judge Joseph Robert Goodwin of the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia ordered Thursday that McCuskey’s office stop enforcing the subpoenas for the next fourteen days. The order comes in response to a request for injunction filed by West Virginia Rivers Coalition and 350.Org last week.  

“The First Amendment forbids a state from using its investigative power that way, and I will not allow it while this case is pending,” Goodwin wrote. “The country was founded on the premise that a citizen owes the government no account of his opinions or of the people he holds them with. The Attorney General has demanded that two citizen organizations hand the state their working lives.” 

Goodwin called the subpoenas “shockingly broad” and agreed that they violated the First Amendment rights of the environmental groups that, “have only engaged in protected advocacy speech, not commercial speech.”  

“The subpoenas issued on the Plaintiffs trespass on their freedom of association, chill their exercise of the First Amendment, and deter others from engaging in similar conduct,” he wrote. 

However, the groups also asked in their filings that the court find the subpoenas violated the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments, issues that Goodwin did not broach. 

The order expires Nov. 12 unless extended, and a hearing on the motion for a preliminary injunction will be set by a separate order. 

Read the order below: