Enviros win decision against Wyo. in 10th Circuit

From the Western Watersheds Project

 Western Watersheds Project is not primarily known for its defense of the U.S. Constitution. We tend to focus on federal laws and policies relating to the environment and public lands. But now, thanks to a Tenth Circuit Court win and a successful but protracted battle in Wyoming, you can count us among the defenders of free speech!

It all started when Jonathan Ratner, our dedicated Wyoming Director, started gathering evidence of livestock-caused water pollution on public lands and submitting his data to the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ). His results of significant fecal coliform contamination were so threatening to the political establishment of the "Cowboy State" that rather than clean up the water, Wyoming ranchers started to seek ways to shut us up.

...In addition to working against WWP and the public's interest in healthy waterways, the Wyoming State Legislature decided to take special interests' right to wreck the environment to another level by passing legislation making it illegal to cross "open land for the purpose of collecting resource data." WWP and our allies were alarmed by the fact that the laws – dubbed "Jonathan's Laws" by our staff – would seek specifically to punish people who intend to communicate data to the government; this is a restriction on free speech and targets a specific class of citizens (data collectors) in a way that the U.S. Constitution prohibits.

After the Wyoming legislature modified the laws in 2016, Wyoming had our case in District Court dismissed. But WWP and our co-plaintiffs weren't fooled by the tweaks in language, and we appealed the case to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's dismissal and concluded that plain reading of the statute demonstrated that Wyoming was seeking to regulate an activity that occurred on public land and that resource data collection is within the definition of the creation of speech – protected under the First Amendment and essential to public participation in numerous federal environmental statutes. The case now goes back to district court... 

The opinion is embedded below

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8Yd5M8kgeNtOGN5SDRkXzczTnc/view?usp=sharing