If the government feels that there is a systemic problem with people attacking infrastructure, then they should take action to address that. As someone who reads a lot of laws there are a few things about this law that put my antennas up:
The “conspiracy” part seems very vague to me. If it were an amendment to existing criminal law regarding conspiracy then we’d have a lot of case law around what a “conspiracy” is. But the phrase “found to be a conspirator” doesn’t really specify what it means or how it will be applied. There’s a big difference between criminal penalties and administrative ones. Notice in the section about individuals it says the fine will be handed out “upon conviction” and that it’s a misdemeanor. No similar language explains under what circumstances organizations will be penalized.
Maybe all of this is assumed because of other parts of Oklahoma law that are already established, I’m much more familiar with Canadian law than American law so I wouldn’t know. But I’m inclined to believe this isn’t the case because I would think the law would reference that in some way (the same way it says, “on conviction” for an individual). So I’m left to read the law as something that allows the government to extract fines from groups that have a criminal as a member, and it sure looks like the point is to “bankrupt groups that organize political protests” exactly as a headline says.
I imagine that’s unconstitutional because organizations have been given first amendment rights by the supreme court, and guilt by association is a first amendment issue. But I also imagine the argument over whether its constitutional is pointless because when the government wields its power to bankrupt you, it shuts down your ability to have your constitutional rights enforced, since constitutional rights are pay-to-play.
Of course all of this circles back to my main point - that constitutional rights are there to override laws, and the illegality of the underlying action has nothing to do with whether it is constitutionally protected.
