An ordinance preempting the state’s authority in oil and gas development through sanctioning of civil disobedience and non-violent protests will go in front of Lafayette’s City Council for a vote later this month.

Drafted by the anti-fracking group East Boulder County United, the “Climate Bill of Rights and Protections” ordinance marks the latest call by Lafayette to denounce fracking regulations in favor of local self-governance.

“We have been left with no alternative,” Councilwoman Merrily Mazza said. “We gave up hope that the state and federal environmental agencies would protect us, or that the courts would put the rights of real people over the rights of the corporate person.

“We gave up hope that those who actually govern care about what happens to the people and the natural environment of our community.”

The provision to legalize non-violent direct action protests — such acts can include sit-ins, strikes, workplace occupations or blockades — would target drilling activity and allow protesters unprecedented immunity from arrest or detainment.

A similar bill passed last year in Grant Township, Penn., the country’s first and only case, offers Lafayette leaders the sole successful legal precedent.

The ordinance adopted in Grant Township allows non-residents who join direct action protests protection under the measure as well, Grant Township Supervisor Stacy Long said Thursday. Despite the town’s landmark ruling last summer, the decision has yet to be tested in court.

“In terms of success,” Long said, “we haven’t had to use that direct action yet, but we’re prepared.”

As for Lafayette, Mazza said it’s time for council to step in.

“Now, we have to do what people in communities historically do when they come to grips with the failure of their own governments to help them,” Mazza said. “They have to revoke their consent to be governed and take steps to govern themselves; and that’s what we’re doing with this ordinance.”

The bill’s far-reaching implications would almost immediately strain the limits placed on the city’s home rule authority, however.

“The question that arises is whether it’s of local concern or of statewide concern,” City Attorney David Williamson said Thursday. “Matters of oil and gas development are of statewide concern. I think there’s a lot of vagueness in those terms and that gives rise to problems.”

Williams said that most, if not all, of the bill’s language would most likely be “unenforceable” and in violation of the constitution and charter.

Attempts to subvert state regulatory interests with oil and gas development in recent years have tied Boulder County cities into long and expensive litigation.

In late 2013, 60 percent of Lafayette voters voted yes for a home-rule charter amendment to establish a Community Bill of Rights that, among other things, banned fracking and other underground extraction.

The Colorado Oil and Gas Association, or COGA, sued the town to overturn the measure a month later, prompting a class-action suit seven months later by Anna Griffen and Cliff Willmeng, of East Boulder County United.

A Boulder District Court judge tossed out the charter amendment just months following the vote.

More recently, the Colorado Supreme Court struck down Longmont’s voter-approved fracking ban last summer, ruling that the local prohibition interferes with state regulations and the state’s interest in oil and gas development.

Efforts to ward off the encroaching wells along Boulder County’s outskirts have seen an uptick over the last few years; calls from residents to extend fracking moratoriums and stunt development growing louder as nearly 2000 possible oil and gas wells dot the county.

“A lot of the civil rights victories in our country were really unprecedented,” Gustavo Reyna, Lafayette mayor pro-tem, said. “I realize this is unprecedented. The question of whether we have an unalienable right to air, water and health, is perhaps an unprecedented and unchallenged concept, but the principle is there.

“At some point, we the people have to say this is unjust and we won’t stand for it any longer,” he said.

Representatives from COGA were not available for comment Thursday.

Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn