North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley, center, shares news of a settlement reached in a lawsuit against the federal government over Dakota Access Pipeline protest costs. Pictured from left are Bureau of Criminal Investigation Chief Agent Ben Leingang, Chief Deputy Attorney General Claire Ness, Wrigley, Solicitor General Phil Axt and Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier. (Photo by Mary Steurer/North Dakota Monitor)
BISMARCK, ND (North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota will receive roughly $28 million from the federal government in compensation for costs the state incurred during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests as part of a settlement announced Thursday.
The amount is the same as was awarded to North Dakota in 2025 by U.S. District Court Judge Dan Traynor.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, concerned demonstrations against the construction of the crude oil pipeline, also known as DAPL, that took place in rural south-central North Dakota in 2016 and 2017. North Dakota alleged that the federal government caused the protests to grow in size and intensity by unlawfully allowing demonstrators to camp on federal land.
The United States initially appealed Traynor’s judgment to the 8th Circuit, but agreed to dismiss that appeal as part of the settlement.
Attorney General Drew Wrigley said at a press conference at the Capitol Thursday morning that the settlement will prevent both parties from spending more public money litigating the nearly seven-year-old lawsuit.
The U.S. Department of Justice as part of the agreement issued a statement Thursday afternoon holding President Barack Obama’s administration responsible for harms North Dakota incurred during the protests.
The agency said that while it still disagrees with Traynor’s legal findings in the case, it “acknowledges in hindsight that, under the Obama Administration, the federal government could have done more to reduce the impacts to the people of North Dakota from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests,” according to the statement.
The Department of Justice’s statement also notes that some protesters engaged in unlawful behavior, including violent acts.
North Dakota in the case alleged that federal officials for months allowed protesters to camp on U.S. Army Corps-managed land despite repeated calls from North Dakota leaders to evict them. The Department of Justice in its Thursday statement maintained that the federal government did this for safety reasons.
“To avoid further escalation of unlawful behaviors, the federal government at the time chose not to forcibly remove the protestors from the encampment on federal property,” the agency said. “The United States recognizes that this difficult choice had painful consequences for North Dakota and many of its residents.”
Wrigley said North Dakota asked for the statement because the state wanted a formal, public acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the federal government.
“An important chapter in our state’s history has been rendered indisputable and closed,” he said.
As another condition of the settlement, the parties asked Traynor to void his judgment and three other orders in which he ruled against the United States in the suit. That included the court’s 120-page ruling from April 2025.
Attorneys for the United States said during a May hearing that they wanted the orders to be vacated because they believed Traynor’s legal conclusions would make them more vulnerable to future lawsuits under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the law North Dakota brought the case under.
North Dakota and the Department of Justice in legal briefs said they both believe this trade-off is outweighed by the time and money the public will save by not having the case proceed to appeals. North Dakota will also avoid the risk of having Traynor’s judgment overturned.
Traynor voided the opinions in May, and the 8th Circuit has since approved the parties’ request to dismiss the appeal.
While state leaders over the course of the lawsuit also placed the majority of the fault on Obama officials, former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum in a 2022 deposition and on the witness stand during a 2024 trial at times also expressed dissatisfaction with the Trump administration’s response.
He testified in the lawsuit that the state asked the Trump administration to send federal agents to help clear out the protest camps in February 2017, but they didn’t.
“We had to go ahead without them, more or less, on the cleanup,” he said on the witness stand during a four-week trial.
Burgum also testified that at some point after the protests ended, North Dakota applied for a presidential emergency declaration regarding the protest from the Trump administration but was denied.
During the trial, the court also heard testimony from former Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Native activists, federal officials, law enforcement and other witnesses.
North Dakota’s lawsuit originally requested $38 million in damages from the federal government. Traynor ordered the executive branch to pay $28 million since the U.S. Department of Justice previously gave the state $10 million as compensation for costs it spent related to the protests, including policing and cleanup costs.
The settlement money will pay off a loan the state took from the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, Wrigley said.
Winona LaDuke, an Indigenous activist who participated in the protests, testified during the trial that the state could have avoided paying so much for cleanup if officials had afforded demonstrators the time to clear the camps.
“The state of North Dakota did a good job of making a big mess,” she said.
The state at the time aimed to clean the area ahead of spring flooding.
The Dakota Access Pipeline carries crude oil from northwest North Dakota to Illinois. It crosses the Missouri River just north of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, which prompted the tribe to begin protesting the pipeline on the grounds that it poses a threat to its water supply and sovereignty.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently granted the pipeline an easement to cross beneath the Missouri River’s Lake Oahe after a yearslong environmental review process. It has been operating for nine years.
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