(Updated to include comments from Hoedel)
The American Civil Liberties Union is going to court on behalf of two environmentalists who it says were retaliated against for protesting fracking operations in the Flint Hills.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the former general counsel of the Kansas Corporation Commission of filing a “baseless” consumer protection complaint against Cindy Hoedel and Scott Yeargain in retaliation for their efforts protesting injection wells.
The lawsuit accuses Dustin Kirk, while working as the KCC’s deputy general counsel, of filing a complaint with the attorney general charging Hoedel and Yeargain with the unauthorized practice of law.
“There was no legitimate basis for believing Hoedel or Yeargain were engaged in the unauthorized practice of law,” said Lauren Bonds, legal director for the ACLU of Kansas.
“As an attorney, he really should’ve known that Cindy and Scott’s activism didn’t constitute a law practice. This was just a way to punish them for exercising their First Amendment rights and for trying to defend their homes.”
In trying to establish that Hoedel was acting as an attorney, Kirk used her emails offering a written testimony sample and advising people how to avoid being removed from the docket during a pre-hearing conference call on an application for injection wells in Barton County.
“At no point did Mr. Kirk, express a concern that Ms. Hoedel’s coordinated efforts with fellow protestants constituted the unauthorized practice of law,” the lawsuit states.
“At no point on the (conference) call did Hoedel represent that she was speaking on behalf of any of the other protestants,” the suit states.
The suit says the allegations framed Hoedel as an “extreme radical,” costing her the race for the Chase County Commission and $20,000 in income from work as a freelance public relations consultant.
Hoedel’s work led to the discovery that more than 1,000 permits for 2,100 injection wells were approved with only a 15-day comment period instead of the required 30 days.
In an email, Hoedel said the attorney general’s office emailed her attorney after 55 days notifying that her case had been closed, “but with no acknowledgement that I had not broken any law, and no indication that I could continue to engage in the same conduct.”
The ACLU also says that the allegations hurt Yeargain, who lives in Franklin County and depends on having a good reputation in the community to rent property and sell cows.
It is believed that Yeargain has protested more than a dozen injection well applications before the KCC since 2016.
The KCC said in a statement that it is not the practice nor the policy of the KCC to file complaints against protesters.
The KCC didn’t learn of the complaint filed against Hoedel and Yeargain until Kirk had left the agency. His last day was Aug. 10, 2018. It is the only complaint of this type the agency is aware of.
“The Commission has a protest process in place to give Kansans an opportunity to express their concerns and participate in the process,” the commission said in a statement.
“It is part of the agency’s job as a regulator to be responsive to citizen protests and we take that responsibility seriously.”
