Fossil fuel pipeline protestors ask Oregon court to reinstate lawsuit against domestic surveillance program
Protesters that successfully halted the construction of a $10-billion natural gas pipeline and terminal are asking an appeals court to reinstate their lawsuit challenging the state’s unauthorized use of its TITAN Fusion Center to investigate Oregon residents, including to surveil First Amendment-protected activity.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2025
Media Contact: Joshua Manson, Policing Project at NYU School of Law, joshua.manson@nyu.edu, (914) 357-0000
New York, NY – The Policing Project at NYU School of Law, Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP have filed an appeal asking the Oregon Court of Appeals to reinstate a lawsuit challenging the state’s operation of a sprawling domestic mass surveillance program.
The lawsuit – filed in December 2021 on behalf of a group of indigenous rights, social justice, and environmental advocates – challenges the Oregon Department of Justice’s operation of its TITAN Fusion Center, a domestic surveillance program that collects, retains, analyzes, and distributes information on Oregon residents, including on law-abiding individuals exercising their constitutional rights to speech and assembly. It then distributes “intelligence products” throughout TITAN’s extensive network, which includes federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement agencies, as well as other public-sector entities and a number of private companies.
Plaintiffs’ appeal is supported by a diverse range of groups that have filed amicus briefs in support, including the Cato Institute, a group of prominent legal scholars, and the Brennan Center for Justice and American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon.
The advocates filed their lawsuit after being targeted for unlawful surveillance because of their peaceful and successful opposition to Jordan Cove LNG—a $10 billion liquefied natural gas pipeline and export terminal the Pembina Pipeline Corporation attempted to build in southwestern Oregon. Analysts at the TITAN Fusion Center monitored the plaintiffs’ peaceful protest activities, including a film screening and outdoors hike along the proposed pipeline’s route, and coordinated with a public relations firm hired by the private corporation behind the fossil fuel project to monitor opposition. In doing so, TITAN sided with the pipeline company against those exercising their constitutionally protected rights of free speech, association, and protest.
TITAN’s surveillance of the plaintiffs in this lawsuit was not an isolated incident. In recent years, the TITAN Fusion Center has also conducted surveillance on participants in the Women’s March, individuals protesting President Trump’s Executive Orders on immigration during his first term, and individuals who used the Black Lives Matter hashtag.
The lawsuit explains that the Oregon Department of Justice (ODOJ) claims the authority to use the TITAN Fusion Center to investigate “all crimes” and “all threats,” and does so entirely in the shadows, without any statutory authorization or legislative guardrails. TITAN’s operations therefore exceed ODOJ’s authority.
The trial court recognized that the Complaint demonstrated the plaintiffs were “punished for exercising their rights by having the government investigate and illegally catalog their activities” and that TITAN’s investigations “caused and continue to cause [Plaintiffs] anxiety about engaging in lawful protest activity.” Therefore, the trial court concluded that Plaintiffs had standing to bring the case because they had “suffered actual injury due to the illegal operation of [TITAN].” Nonetheless, the trial court dismissed the case, finding “a reasonable basis for the implication that ODOJ has the authority to create and operate [TITAN].”
In their appeal, the plaintiffs argue that TITAN’s surveillance operations are unlawful because the Oregon Legislature has not authorized ODOJ to investigate “all crimes” and “all threats,” including plaintiffs’ constitutionally protected, entirely lawful protest activity. In their brief, the plaintiffs highlight longstanding Oregon Supreme Court precedent recognizing that ODOJ does not have the sweeping investigative powers that it is now claiming for itself.
Read the opening brief here. For more information on the case, please visit https://www.policingproject.org/titan-lawsuit.
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The Policing Project at NYU School of Law promotes public safety through transparency, equity, and democratic engagement. Learn about the Policing Project at www.policingproject.org.
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