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Like the president, state legislators who advance these bills arent doing so out of any genuine concern for protecting speech or public safety, as they sometimes claim. In fact, our analysis finds that legislators often explicitly introduce proposals to limit the rights of people whose positions they dislike. Thats not adherence to the First Amendment, which protects the rights of those we disagree withits adherence to self-interest. Specifically, we find a direct correlation between recent years astonishing rise in collective action, particularly by Black Lives Matter and Standing Rock activists, and a rise in attempts to delegitimize and criminalize those very demonstrations.

Lawrence Glickman: How white backlash controls American progress

From session to session and state to state, these bills look remarkably similar. Thats no coincidence. In January 2018, the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, published a model Critical Infrastructure Protection Act, which drew heavily from two Oklahoma anti-trespass bills, H.B. 1123 and H.B. 2128. This bill defined critical infrastructure to include oil pipelines and dramatically raised the penalties for trespass upon such property. Since then, more than 20 bills modeled on it have also passed. Activists are challenging one law in Louisiana that targets protests near gas and oil pipelines. House Bill 727 passed in 2018 and allows for felony charges of up to five years imprisonment for protesters. This, and bills like it, clearly aim to criminalize mass-protest actions such as those against the Dakota Access Pipeline.

The similarities are also not coincidental because quite literally the same legislators keep trying the same tactics, even after courts swat away their misguided bills. These zombie bills refuse to die at the end of the legislative session, and keep returning to haunt our constitutional rights. Legislatorss doggedness is appalling: In South Dakota, a bill was rushed through the legislature and signed quickly into law last year, establishing a civil action to sue riot boosters, defined as anyone who directs, advises, encourages, or solicits others toward acts of force or violence. This left the door open for police to arrest people for encouraging violence through First Amendmentprotected expression, such as chanting common protest slogans like No justice, no peace or even leading trainings of prospective protesters about their rights. A federal court struck the law down as unconstitutional, but state legislators were quick to introduce a redrafted bill just months later, tweaked to extend the crime of trespass to critical-infrastructure facilities. That bill has already passed and been signed into law by the governor.

All told, 116 bills to limit protest rights have been introduced since 2015, and 15 states have passed some form of anti-protest proposal, some passing several. And already this legislative session, were tracking 16 similar bills that are working their way through state capitolsdespite the obviously more pressing public-health and public-policy concerns.

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First Amendment RightsIf You Agree With the President - The Atlantic