What are Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP)?
Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) are abusive lawsuits designed to shut down criticism or protest related to issues in the public interest. These lawsuits are filed to intimidate and harass the speaker into silence, and typically lack legal merit. SLAPPs are frequently used by fossil fuel companies to retaliate against climate defenders, including community members, scientists, and other critics.
Individuals or companies filing SLAPPs are less concerned with winning the lawsuit than with the litigation process itself. They aim to make it as painful as possible for the defendant by stretching out proceedings, making invasive demands for information, and driving up legal costs. Many also point to the psychological cost of SLAPPs, which exhaust the target and drain them financially.
How do you know a lawsuit is a SLAPP?
SLAPPs are effective because they can masquerade as genuine lawsuits. SLAPP litigants will always claim to be pursuing a legitimate claim; their lawsuit may otherwise be at risk of being struck out or sanctioned by the judge.
To define a lawsuit as a SLAPP, look out for several strategies and patterns. One common feature is a lawsuit that is part of a broader campaign of harassment, which may include a smear campaign or multiple lawsuits against the same defendant.
How do you define criticism or protest “in the public interest”?
SLAPPs intentionally seek to shut down public participation, which is typically defined as any effort to participate in public affairs. SLAPPs can affect anyone who engages in the public interest, but are often said to most commonly target “public watchdogs” – that is, those who seek to hold the powerful to account. For example, NGOs and activists can qualify as public watchdogs in the EU and are entitled to a higher level of protection in light of their “important contribution to the discussion of public affairs.”
Who files SLAPPs and why do they do it?
We do not currently have a worldwide and annual study of who files SLAPPs and for what purposes. However, there is anecdotal evidence that shows environmental issues are higher targets and that the threat is rising.
The Coalition Against SLAPPs in Europe (CASE) has been cataloguing SLAPPs across Europe since 2019, and has now collected more than 800 examples. In 2024, the coalition found that corruption was the main subject matter of SLAPPs, with the environment coming in second.
The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), studied SLAPPs globally and made a similar finding. In its analysis of 355 cases that showed hallmarks of SLAPPs, 65% related to issues of mining, agriculture, logging and lumber, or palm oil. The other main sectors involved were hydropower, oil and gas, and property development.
EarthRights has identified at least 152 cases in the past ten years where the fossil fuel industry has used strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs) and other judicial harassment tactics in attempts to silence or punish its critics in the United States.
These groups have reached similar conclusions about who uses SLAPPs: a third of the cases identified by BHRRC and 45.2% of the cases identified by CASE were brought by companies or people connected with companies. This reflects another common feature of SLAPPs: an imbalance of power between the defendant and the claimant. In short, the richer and more powerful the litigant is relative to the defendant, the more effective the SLAPP will be in advancing its objectives.
While issues relating to corruption and environmental destruction tend to be the most common basis of SLAPPs, these suits are used to block accountability on a wide range of issues. Indeed, wherever abuse of power is exposed, there will almost invariably be a pattern of legal intimidation preceding that exposure.
How have SLAPPs been used against climate defenders?
One of the most recent and prominent climate SLAPP cases is in the US state of North Dakota. Oil and gas company Energy Transfer successfully sued Greenpeace and several individual activists. The lawsuit relates to protests around the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), and is a test of this legal dangerous tactic. In March 2025, they won the case and Greenpeace was ordered to pay over $660M to the company. The results have wide implications for climate justice movements. The decision could also emboldened fossil fuel companies around the world to file similar SLAPPs against organizations and individuals.
Unlike Greenpeace’s case, however, most SLAPPs operate under the surface. The cases referred to Global Climate Legal Defense’s team frequently target individual activists or small community groups who are not part of a large organisation, and who therefore lack the institutional resources and platform needed to effectively fight off the SLAPP.
Are certain countries more susceptible to SLAPPs, or is it a worldwide problem?
Globally, researchers have documented a growth in the use of SLAPPs. Some countries, however, have proven to be more fertile ground for the growth of SLAPPs than others. These include Australia, Brazil, India, Italy, Indonesia, Peru, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, US, and UK.
These countries have vastly different standards on free speech. In some cases, powerful substantive legal measures are in place to protect freedom of expression, such as the First Amendment of the American or South African constitution. Without procedural safeguards to prevent abuse of the legal system, however, such measures do little to protect against SLAPPs.
What use is the First Amendment, for example, if defendants can be forced out of court before their case can be heard? SLAPPs feed on certain defects in the judicial system – such as inefficient legal processes or impossibly high legal fees – and the more those defects are allowed to continue, the more SLAPPs will grow as a problem.
How can the law or courts be used to stop the growth of SLAPPs?
The first anti-SLAPP law was signed into law in the US state of Washington in 1989. Since then, anti-SLAPP laws have been introduced in a total of 36 US states and territories, as well as three Canadian provinces, the Australian Central Territory, the Philippines, and – in the context of the environment – Indonesia.
These laws vary widely in the protections they provide and, in the US, the lack of safeguards against SLAPPs brought under federal law has enabled SLAPPs on a national level to proliferate. Most anti-SLAPP laws, however, include the same core components, including sanctions against those who use SLAPPs and an early dismissal mechanism to filter the cases out of court before too much harm can be caused.
In Europe, meanwhile, 2024 saw the passage of an EU Anti-SLAPP Directive, which established a set of minimum standards for EU member states to meet in their national legal systems. Unfortunately, the Directive is littered with crucial gaps and ambiguities, opening the door to an inconsistent application across Europe. Much therefore depends on the process by which EU member states incorporate the directive into national law (known as the transposition process).
Courts are also developing judicial doctrines that help to counter SLAPPs. In countries such as Ireland and South Africa, anti-SLAPP lawyers are developing the doctrine of abuse of process to challenge SLAPPs.
Are some “legitimate” legal actions actually SLAPPs in disguise?
It is a common misconception that SLAPPs are synonymous with a frivolous or meritless lawsuit – and that civil disobedience, where the activists in question openly acknowledge that they have violated the law, cannot therefore be the basis of SLAPPs.
While SLAPPs tend to be baseless, however, they will sometimes be partially meritorious – providing an opportunity for the SLAPP litigant to claim they are pursuing a legitimate claim. For example, the Council of Europe’s list of indicative qualities therefore cites “partially or fully unfounded” as one feature of abuse, but other features may equally serve to expose the nature of the lawsuit as a SLAPP.
Examples may include far-reaching injunctions that encompass lawful acts of protest as well as acts of civil disobedience; claims that target those only peripherally involved in disruptive protest movements; or eye-wateringly high damage claims that bear little relation to any damage actually caused.
