North Dakota will receive $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.

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The dispute stemmed from the Army Corps of Engineers' handling of the pipeline route, which a federal judge had previously said created significant liability issues for the government.

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 United States as part of the agreement will issue a statement that “recognizes that the federal government’s response to these events fell short in important respects,” Wrigley said at the press conference.

The statement was not immediately available Thursday morning.

Wrigley said the federal government’s statement also recognizes that some Dakota Access Pipeline protesters engaged in unlawful behavior during the demonstrators, including violent acts.

“Law enforcement officers faced repeated confrontations while carrying out their sworn duties, and our federal government at that time stood idly by,” Wrigley 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.

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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 Justices 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.

Wrigley on Thursday said the federal government’s neglectful actions regarding the protests happened under the Obama administration.

While state leaders over the course of the lawsuit also placed the majority of the fault on Obama officials, former North Dakota Governor 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 Governor 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.