Lawyers for a group of Southern Oregonians who demonstrated against the Jordan Cove pipeline project will appear in a Salem courtroom this week to defend their lawsuit over being monitored by an anti-terror center from at least the latter 2010’s into 2021.

Portland lawyer Jeffrey Rosenthal, working pro bono in cooperation with New York University’s Policing Project, will face the Oregon Attorney General’s office Thursday in Marion County Circuit Court to defend a lawsuit filed in December 2021 on behalf of plaintiffs that include community organizer and former Phoenix City Councilor Sarah Westover; Klamath tribal members Ka’ila Farrell-Smith and Rowena Jackson; and Oregon Women’s Land Trust President Rosemary Francis Eatherington.

The Oregon Department of Justice earlier this summer filed a motion to dismiss the Southern Oregonians’ lawsuit nearly three years into the pending litigation. The local community organizers alleged in their still-pending suit that their rights were violated when a law enforcement data clearinghouse the DOJ operates known as the Oregon Titan Fusion Center unlawfully kept tabs on the demonstrators. The plaintiffs in the case had organized peaceful demonstrations opposing the since-thwarted Jordan Cove natural gas pipeline; the NYU Policing Project argues the plaintiffs were within their constitutional rights.

Oregon DOJ filed a motion to dismiss the case on Aug. 19 that did not dispute any allegations but instead relied on a variety of legal arguments. For instance, the DOJ’s motion included arguments that injury alone was not enough for legal standing, according to an earlier news report.

Oregon Titan Fusion is part of a national network of roughly 80 fusion centers that retain, analyze and distribute information on threat-related information between federal, state, local and tribal agencies, according to the NYU Policing Project suit. The domestic intelligence program was formed based on guidance and suggestions in the 9/11 Commission Report to better foster communication about terrorism threats.

The NYU Policing Project’s suit alleges that the Oregon Titan Fusion Center operates without legislative accountability. Many of the allegations in the case stem from Coos County Sheriff’s Office documents obtained in a records request and publicized in a 2019 article in The Guardian with the headline ”Revealed: anti-terror center helped police track environmental activists”.

The Southern Oregonians aided by the NYU Policing Project allege in their 2021 civil rights suit claim that the Oregon Titan Fusion Center routinely monitored them in investigations that lacked a criminal connection in the 2010s through late 2021 — and thus say the agency violated state law that prohibits law enforcement agencies from collecting information about the political, religious or social views of an individual or group unless they have reasonable grounds to suspect the individual is involved in a crime.