The Fox River empties into Lake Michigan in Green Bay, where city officials have proposed a resolution acknowledging that local bodies of water have a right to be protected. (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
Two Republican legislators have proposed legislation that would prevent local governments from enacting “rights of nature” ordinances — laws that grant natural entities legal rights — claiming that such ordinances are “incompatible with America’s founding principles.”
The proposal from Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) and Sen. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) was released after the Green Bay City Council voted unanimously last month to direct the city’s sustainability council to begin drafting a “rights of nature” resolution.
The concept of granting natural entities legal rights is relatively new in American government, but countries around the world have enshrined legal rights for nature into their constitutions. In Wisconsin, the Menominee and Ho-Chunk Nations have written rights of nature provisions into their tribal constitutions. Two years ago, the Milwaukee County Board enacted its own rights of nature resolution that promises to protect the health of the Menominee, Milwaukee and Fox rivers and Lake Michigan.
The Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights has been working for years to track and support the passage of rights of nature laws around the world. The organization’s executive director Mari Margill says these laws are meant to help protect the environment.
“As environmental crises deepen, supporters of the bill are trying to make it harder to protect the environment,” Margill says of the Goeben and Nass proposal.
While the Republican legislation, if it manages to pass the Legislature, is unlikely to be signed into law by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, critics say the proposal is an example of kneejerk Republican opposition to pro-environment ideas and another instance of Republicans from northeast Wisconsin attempting to meddle in Green Bay city politics.
A co-sponsorship memo supporting the legislation states that these types of ordinances threaten the integrity of the legal system and property rights.
“Allowing and promoting this ideology represents a dangerous shift in legal precedent,” the memo states. “It would allow nonhuman entities to sue in court, threatening property rights, stalling development, and burdening the judicial system.”
Goeben did not respond to a request for comment.
Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-Milwaukee), who helped write Milwaukee County’s resolution as a member of the county board in 2023, tells the Wisconsin Examiner the idea of granting bodies of water legal rights isn’t so different from corporations having legal “personhood.” In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its Citizens United decision that corporations have the right to free speech.
“It is wholly disingenuous to say only real tangible people have rights and then fight explicitly for those rights for corporations,” Clancy says. “It’s frankly frustrating to see Republicans take these really popular measures, these are broadly popular things, and rather than engaging with us in dialog, just trying to block these things through process. It’s a disingenuous way to go about it. Let’s talk about the things that necessitate these pieces of legislation.”
He adds that legislators have the power to do more than just write legislation. Goeben’s district is in the Green Bay suburbs but doesn’t include any of the city, but, Clancy argues that she could go to city council meetings and speak with people about these ideas instead of trying to blanket ban them without any dialog.
“It would be a much more earnest process to show up in Green Bay and go to those meetings and voice your concerns there,” he says.” We have bully pulpits, I show up at the city council, county board, school board meetings, both in my capacity as a legislator and as a parent and community member. Make your case there rather than trying to ban it.”
A number of Green Bay area officials expressed frustration at Republicans again involving themselves in Green Bay city politics. Earlier this year, Green Bay-area Republicans Rep. David Steffen (R-Howard) and Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) proposed a bill that would limit the types of flags allowed to be flown at government buildings. Many Green Bay residents saw the bill as an effort to weigh in on a local debate over the flying of LGBTQ Pride flags.
“Given the challenges our communities are facing, from our housing crisis to fully funding our public schools, I am always surprised by elected officials who don’t represent this city wasting time on policies that don’t solve real problems or fund actual solutions,” Rep. Amaad Rivera-Wagner (D-Green Bay) says.
Joey Prestley, the Green Bay city council member who has led the local rights of nature effort, says the resolution — which hasn’t been drafted yet — is meant to serve as a non-binding advisory statement that city government will consider the environmental effects of its decisions throughout the development process.
“Historically, the human actors have been the ones who have had the rights and the natural features have not been able to have people speaking for them,” he says.
Prestley says the idea for the resolution started after a group of residents objected late in the process to a new housing development. The development would be near the Niagara escarpment, a geological feature residents want to protect, but didn’t hit the thresholds that would instigate involvement from the federal Environmental Protection Agency or state Department of Natural Resources.
“My hope with a resolution would be maybe we consider these — all environmental features — but especially these ones that are important to our region, earlier in the process, and more thoroughly in the process, so we don’t have people coming up in the 11th Hour and saying, ‘wait a second, you can’t build this housing development,’” Prestley says.
He adds that if that consideration and discussion of the environmental effects came earlier, it could have been a more constructive discussion rather than turning into a heated local debate that had the potential to kill a housing project in a city that, like much of Wisconsin, is in dire need of more housing. The Green Bay city council approved the 160-unit project in April
“If it had been earlier in our process, it could have been more collaborative, and it could have been neighbors and environmental advocates working together with the developer and the city to make sure it’s a plan that benefits everybody, everybody who engages with the environment, everybody who relies on the environment, everybody who appreciates the environment,” he says.
In proposing a resolution, he adds, the objective is “not trying to compel anyone, but really trying to adapt as a philosophy for the city that we want to consider nature as the original inhabitants of the land did before we were here.”
Prestley says it’s easy to spin the rights of nature discussion as “the work of a crazy person” who wants “to get trees to sue the city,” but actually he says he’s trying to make sure the city considers the potentially damaging environmental effects of its actions after decades of managing the harmful contamination of the Fox River.
“There was not enough people speaking up for the damage that was happening to the river back then, and it created something that affected the whole community,” Prestley says. “People used to swim in the river. Nobody touches the river now. Maybe we should consider the environment. That’s not a radical idea, that is a sensible idea, considering what we’ve done in the past in this community, and thinking about how we want to move forward.”
Prestley says the proposed legislation seems “silly” and notes a number of city actions, such as wetland reconstruction, that have benefited the environment. He says that if the Legislature isn’t going to help, it should get out of the way.
“I think we’re trying to do good things in Green Bay for the environment,” he says. “And I think the state’s responsibility should be to help with the good things, or to do their own thing.”
The lawmakers proposing the bill, “they’re not helping us,” Prestley says. “They’re not helping the people, they’re just opposing things, and I don’t know why.”
