# Noerr-Pennington Doctrine The rule that **petitioning the government is immune from liability**, derived from the [[First Amendment]] Petition Clause. Named for *Eastern Railroad Presidents Conference v. Noerr Motor Freight* (1961) and *United Mine Workers v. Pennington* (1965), both originally antitrust cases: a company cannot be held liable under the Sherman Act for lobbying for anticompetitive legislation, because the injury flows from the government's action, not the petitioning. The recognized limit is the **sham exception** — petitioning that is a cover for direct interference with a competitor's business, rather than a genuine attempt to influence government, loses the immunity. **Why it is in this KB.** The doctrine has expanded well beyond antitrust and now functions as a general shield for corporate political activity. In climate-liability litigation it is the technical vehicle for the [[Corporate Free Speech]] argument: amicus briefs in [[Boulder County v. Suncor Energy]] argue that companies cannot be held liable for having urged lawmakers to reject emissions restrictions or publicly opposed international climate agreements, because that is protected petitioning. It is the doctrinal cousin of the anti-SLAPP argument Exxon ran in Massachusetts (see [[SLAPP Lawsuits]]). ## Stub — fill out - The two founding cases and their facts - The sham-exception line of authority, *California Motor Transport* through *Professional Real Estate Investors* - The expansion beyond antitrust into tort, consumer-protection, and civil-rights contexts