Many fervent activists are losing touch with the fact that free speech is not a license for violence, harassment, and vandalism. From college campuses and city streets to federal buildings, militant protesters are using force to draw attention to their causes. It’s time for the legal system to stop this reckless behavior.

The unlawful blockade at the Energy Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., this past month is a high-profile example of the slide from protected speech to misconduct. Climate Defiance, the climate activist group behind the blockade, has made national headlines over the past year through their deployment of confrontational tactics, such as storming a baseball field attended by members of Congress and rushing a stage during a book launch event featuring Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar.

It’s not just at our civic institutions where an “ends justify the means” attitude toward harassment and property destruction is taking hold. In the rioting after a 2020 police shooting in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the New York Times reported that 115 small businesses, many of them minority-owned, were either destroyed or damaged.

Of course, the rogue actions of a few people should not lead to the condemnation of any cause. But for some protesters, unlawful aggression is increasingly the point.

At a gathering of protesters in Portland, Oregon, literature titled Why Break Windows was disseminated, arguing that property destruction was excusable as part of a righteous cause. One recent poll found that 41% of college students believe that violence is justified if it’s used to prevent “hate speech.” This sentiment closely parallels themes conveyed in the 2021 publication How to Blow Up A Pipeline, which promotes sabotage of industrial facilities as a substitute for non-violent protests. After finding its way into college curriculums, the book was adapted into a movie that was described in the FBI Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate as a vehicle that “could spark eco-terrorism against U.S. energy infrastructure.” 

The growing juxtaposition of speech and violence by protest movements is concerning. It’s also a matter where courts may soon weigh in. 

Next month, a North Dakota jury will consider whether to hold Greenpeace liable over its role in the destructive protests over the Dakota Access Pipeline. The lawsuit claims that the opposition to the pipeline devolved into property destruction, trespass, assaults on company employees, and other actions that far exceed the bounds of democratic political action. The damage from the protests cost the companies involved in the pipeline an estimated $7.5 billion.

Greenpeace argues that the lawsuit is an “attack on free speech.” But it’s not Greenpeace’s speech or public positioning that the lawsuit questions—it’s the organization’s conduct.

If the case is successful, it could mean bankruptcy for Greenpeace. A win for the plaintiffs would also send a strong signal that while the right to protest is protected by our Constitution, violence and property destruction are not.