Vermont green group bows to mining company's silence demand - WCAX

RUTLAND, Vt. (AP) - The head of a Vermont environmental group has complied with a mining company's demand that the group remove from its website the names of the company's owners, and a legal expert is questioning that decision.

A lawyer for Swiss-based Omya emailed Annette Smith, founder of Vermonters for a Clean Environment, demanding she remove from the group's website the names of Omya owners Max Andre Schachenmann and Eric Schachenmann.

Smith tells the Rutland Herald Omya is a big company and she didn't want to fight with it. Omya mines marble in Vermont that it crushes into calcium carbonate, a component of many paints, paper and other products.

But Professor Jared Carter of the Vermont Law School says Smith was within her First Amendment rights to publish the owners' names.

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