It may be spring in Western Pennsylvania, but there’s a new chill in the air in Butler County, where opponents of shale gas drilling and fracking near the Mars School District campus say they feel intimidated by gas leaseholders’ legal efforts to silence them.

“Our focus is all about protecting the 3,700 children at the Mars schools, but because of these lawsuits there are already people who have become shy and have stepped away from the group,” Shelly Titchen, a member of the Mars Parent Group, said Thursday afternoon at the Butler County Courthouse.

Ms. Titchen was one of more than 60 people — drilling opponents and shale gas leaseholders — who jammed the courtroom of Common Pleas Judge S. Michael Yeager to listen to arguments about whether to dismiss the second personal injury land use case brought by leaseholders, who claim drilling opponents have denied them the ability to make money from the mineral rights they own beneath properties in Middlesex.

The gas leaseholder lawsuit seeks more than $500,000 from opponents, including the Delaware Riverkeeper Network and the Clean Air Council, claiming that they have conspired in a “sham” effort to interfere with gas lease contracts by making false statements to the zoning hearing board and appealing the board’s decision to open up 90 percent of the township to drilling.

Witold “Vic” Walczak, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union in Pennsylvania, filed the motion to dismiss the case, arguing, as he did in September in the first lawsuit filed by the leaseholders, that the second one also is a “SLAPP suit.” That’s a strategic lawsuit against public participation, aimed at silencing, penalizing and chilling participation of individuals and groups engaged in the debate of important public policy issues.

“The First Amendment allows people to participate in debate and criticism in the public square,” Mr. Walczak said. “They cannot be penalized for that.”

“The First Amendment cannot be used to protect … false statements that interfere with the rights of my clients to receive payments for what’s on their property,” said attorney Richard Sandow, who represents 12 individual landowners and Dewey Homes and Investment Properties LLC. He denied that the case was a SLAPP suit.

All of those landowners have leased their shale gas to R.E. Gas Development, a Rex Energy subsidiary, which has built the Geyer drill pad along Route 228, less than a mile from the Mars schools. It has already drilled three vertical wells and is now drilling the horizontals. Fracking is scheduled for this summer.

Judge Yeager will consider Thursday’s arguments, but he set no time frame for a decision. The first leaseholder lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Marilyn K. Horan in October, about a month after she heard arguments.

Reid Joyce, a Middlesex resident, who described himself as an “observer,” not an opponent, said the leaseholder lawsuit has already had a big impact in the rural township.

“People are scared to speak out and depressed and reluctant to participate in public meetings, so it’s already sort of successful,” Mr. Joyce said. ”But if my three kids were still school age, I’d be terrified for them. And if I lived right next to the drill site like some of these people here, I’d be scared to death.”

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