Pro-Castro guild sues N.D. sheriff for civil-rights violations, excessive force at protests

The National Lawyers Guild may have been a big fan of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, but it’s got a real problem with Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier.

The left-wing guild has filed a class-action lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop the sheriff from using “excessive force” against “peaceful” Dakota Access pipeline activists, arguing that officers have violated their civil rights by “[chilling] their freedom of speech and association and free exercise of religion.”

“The Morton County Sheriff’s office not only violates the constitutional rights of peaceful protesters, but their actions highlight the long history of abuse against Indigenous peoples,” said Brandy Toelupe, an attorney for the guild’s Water Protectors Legal Collective, in a Monday statement.

The same day, the guild issued a statement mourning the Nov. 25 death of the Cuban strongman, praising his commitment to “medical solidarity and literacy” and fight against “white colonialism,” without mentioning his long history of suppressing freedom of speech and religion.

“Cuba under his leadership inspired generations worldwide to act in solidarity across national lines and against poverty, racism, disease and profit-inspired threats to the world’s environment,” said the Monday statement.

The contrast was flagged by Rob Port, a conservative radio talk-show host with North Dakota’s WDAY-AM, who accused the organization of a politically motivated double standard.

“The NLG is clearly ok with political suppression, as long as it’s the right kind of people [who] are being suppressed,” said Mr. Port on his SayAnything blog. “That makes it easier to understand why the group would propose enjoining police officers from using non-lethal crowd control measures against #NoDAPL as they announced yesterday.”

He described a “large faction” of the protest movement as “a bullying, unlawful mob which has repeatedly trampled on the rights of others despite the best efforts of law enforcement. But in the eyes of the NLG it is the right kind of bullying, unlawful mob.”

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of nine protesters in U.S. District Court in North Dakota, centers on the Nov. 20 standoff between as many as 1,000 activists seeking to cross the closed Backwater Bridge on Highway 1806 and deputies from several counties trying to stop them.

Law enforcement deployed rubber bullets, water hoses, tear gas and flash-bang grenades, also known as stun grenades, to hold off the protesters, who set fires and hurled rocks and flaming debris at officers.

The nine plaintiffs were hurt while “peacefully protesting” and required medical attention, said the lawsuit.

“Israel Hoagland–Lynn tried to help two people who had been shot with water cannons and rubber bullets and was shot in the back of his head by an impact munition. He lost consciousness, was hospitalized, and needed 17 staples for a head wound,” said the guild in its statement.

“Noah Michael Treanor, while praying, was shot by the water hoses or cannon. Once on the ground, he was shot in the head by an impact munition. Bleeding badly, he was hospitalized,” the statement said. 

More lawsuits may be coming. Not named as a plaintiff in the guild’s motion is Sophia Wilansky, a 21-year-old activist who is expected to require multiple surgeries after her arm was badly injured in the Nov. 20 uproar.

Her father, Wayne Wilansky, who said last week her arm was “pretty much blown off” by a “grenade,” is a personal-injury lawyer in New York City. A GoFundMe page to cover her medical expenses has already raised more than $400,000.

“I am left without the right words to describe the anguish of watching her look at her now alien arm and hand,” Mr. Wilansky said in a Nov. 22 statement.

The North Dakota Joint Information Center said her injuries are “inconsistent with any resources used by law enforcement,” and reported that during the protest there was an explosion, after which a woman was seen being dragged away from an area where Molotov cocktail ingredients were later found.

Sheriff Kirchmeier and other officers insist they have deployed the least-lethal means against the increasingly violent agitators, some of whom he has described as “paid protesters.”