Nottingham (USA) Ordinance: Chemical Trespass, Community Rights, and Rights of Nature (2019)

Summary

In March 2019, Nottingham, New Hampshire’s Freedom from Chemical Trespass Ordinance was adopted by a vote of the townspeople at a town meeting. At that time, the organization Nottingham Water Alliance had been working on community education, community organizing and signature gathering for a year (with help and guidance from CELDF). The ordinance gives townspeople the right to self-government, a healthy climate, clean air, water, and soil; and it gives ecosystems, the right “to naturally exist, flourish, regenerate, evolve, and be restored.” The ordinance also seeks to limit judicial challenges to the ordinance and subjects any business entity or government that willfully interferes with these rights to a $1,000 per day fine. Local business operators filed suit to challenge the ordinance’s validity. On February 7, 2021, the court overturned the ordinance, deciding that it exceeded the town’s authority under state law; it was unconstitutionally vague; it was preempted by state laws regulating various potentially environmentally destructive practices/substances; and violated the First Amendment and the Separation of Powers Doctrine by attempting to prohibit challenges to the ordinance and by providing that if “a court fails to uphold [the ordinance] or purports to declare it unlawful, the ordinance shall not be affected.”