Groups Take Line 3 Permit Fight to Minnesota Supreme Court

Saint Paul, MN -- Groups filed a legal challenge with the Minnesota Supreme Court today appealing a lower court’s decision to uphold the Public Utilities Commission’s 2020 approval of Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline. 

The groups, including the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, the Red Lake Band of Chippewa, the Sierra Club, Honor the Earth, Friends of the Headwaters, and Youth Climate Interveners, argued in their challenge to the permit that the PUC failed to demonstrate demand for the tar sands oil that Line 3 would transport. If completed, the pipeline would cross more than 200 bodies of water, including lakes, wetlands, and rivers, posing serious risks to Minnesota’s freshwater resources and the lake country of northern Minnesota where the Ojibwe people harvest wild rice and hold treaty rights. The PUC’s approval was upheld by the Minnesota Court of Appeals last month, though Judge Peter Reyes issued a dissenting opinion, noting that the PUC “committed legal errors and acted arbitrarily or capriciously by granting [Enbridge] a certificate of need that is unsupported by substantial evidence.”

The legal battle over the project continues as Enbridge is charging ahead with construction, prompting thousands of Indigenous water protectors and allies to protest along the pipeline route in northern Minnesota. Pipeline opponents are continuing to urge President Joe Biden to step in to stop the pipeline by instructing the US Army Corps of Engineers to revoke or suspend  a key water crossing permit that was fast-tracked by the Trump administration, bypassing environmental review. 

Tomorrow, hundreds of water protectors, joined by actress Marisa Tomei, writer and activist Eve Ensler, and Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, plan to gather and rally at the Shell River where the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline is under construction.

“Minnesota decision makers have repeatedly failed to protect the health of our communities, clean water, and climate by allowing Enbridge to trample on Indigenous treaty rights for the sake of a tar sands pipeline we don’t even need,” said Margaret Levin, State Director of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter. “We will continue to make our case in court that the permits for this dirty tar sands pipeline should never have been approved, but with construction underway, there is no time to waste. We urge President Biden to step in, live up to his commitments to climate action and environmental justice, and stop Line 3.” 

“Now we appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court to right the wrongs that the state and its rogue agencies have foisted on the Anishinaabe of the north during climate change and the unraveling of the tar sands economy in Canada, plus the worst drought that we can remember as the DNR and Enbridge withdraw 5 billion gallons of water from a fragile ecosystem,” says Winona LaDuke, Executive Director of Honor the Earth. “The Anishinaabe are a sovereign people petitioning this court as an independent nation with constitutionally protected treaty rights that Enbridge, the PUC and the Governor’s office trample on time and again. We intend to uphold our rights, our land and water, even as we take our case to the highest court in Minnesota.”

“In the midst of record heat waves and drought, the state of Minnesota has chosen to protect a corporation’s bottom line before the health of its people,” said Youth Climate Intervenor Frances Wetherall. “Building an unnecessary tar sands pipeline with the emissions equivalent of 50 coal plants runs counter to everything we know about climate change. As Judge Reyes wrote in his powerful dissent: ‘Such a decision cannot stand.’ We hope the Minnesota Supreme Court won’t let it, or we all pay the price.”

“Friends of the Headwaters is grateful that Judge Reyes had the curiosity to examine the factual record, the audacity to issue a strong dissent, and the integrity to point out that Enbridge had failed to demonstrate that Minnesota needed Line 3,” said Richard Smith, president of Friends of the Headwaters. “Our small, all-volunteer group has filed a Petition to Review with hopes that the judges in Minnesota’s Supreme Court will emulate Reyes' discipline and scholarship in ruling on the Line 3 boondoggle.”