U.S. District Judge Joseph R. Goodwin approved a temporary restraining order Thursday to keep two environmental groups from having to hand over a decade’s worth of documents to West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey.
Goodwin said he expects the advocacy groups, West Virginia Rivers Coalition and 350.org, to succeed in having the subpoenas dismissed for violating their First Amendment rights. This restraining order gives them time to argue their case without being required to hand over the subpoenaed documents by the original Nov. 2 deadline.
“The First Amendment forbids a State from using its investigative power that way, and I will not allow it,” Goodwin said in his opinion.
The groups sued McCuskey a few weeks after he subpoenaed them demanding 10 years’ worth of published documents including emails and internal communications. The groups argued the demands were not justified and were an attempt to stop their outspoken opposition of the coal and natural gas industries.
“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 wrote.
McCuskey has openly supported coal, oil and gas production throughout his time in office. In his response to the lawsuit, McCuskey said that he was investigating the groups for misleading their supporters with false climate science claims.
The environmental groups and the attorney general will be back in court to argue whether the subpoenas will be dismissed at a later date.
In his opinion, Goodwin noted that McCuskey’s subpoenas are part of a larger trend. He referenced three similar cases that were stopped, where civil investigatory demands were used against groups that the state and federal government did not agree with.
Goodwin wrote, “This phenomenon of state and federal investigation into the affairs of advocacy non-profits has begun to permeate our culture.”
