The federal Environmental Protection Agency cannot impose pollution rules on Louisiana that discriminate based on race in locations such as the industrialized areas along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a judge ruled.
A federal judge in the Western District of Louisiana, James Cain Jr., sided with the state of Louisiana in the Jan. 23 decision. Cain granted the state’s motion for a preliminary injunction barring the EPA from enforcing what are called disparate-impact requirements under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“It is abundantly clear that (the) defendants’ actions … have created great cause for concern, not only for the state of Louisiana but also for our sister states who have also found themselves at the whim of the EPA and its overreaching mandates,” Cain’s opinion states. “The state has met its burden as to irreparable harm.”
The EPA had been working to put rules in place to provide relief to Black residents affected by industrialization in the Mississippi River region known as Cancer Alley, but Cain’s ruling seems to have shut down those efforts.
“The public interest here is that governmental agencies abide by its laws and treat all of its citizens equally, without considering race,” the opinion states. “To be sure, if a decision maker has to consider race, to decide, it has indeed participated in racism. Pollution does not discriminate.”
Under the EPA policies, Louisiana would be burdened with increased compliance costs as a result of “extra-regulatory requirements,” Cain concluded.
Environmental groups, including the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, expressed disappointment about the federal court ruling. Cain’s opinion bars the EPA and U.S. Justice Department from withholding federal funds from the state based on the disparate-impact requirements.
“Pollution affects a lot of different communities in Louisiana,” Anne Rolfes, director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told the Louisiana Record. “It hits Black communities hardest. … There is not a serious effort to curb this pollution or protect people. This decision is in line with the absolute lack of acknowledgement that pollution issues are serious here.”
The brigade works on grassroots actions to hold the oil and chemical industries, as well as government agencies, accountable for the human costs of pollution. Industrial accidents continue to affect people in the Cancer Alley region despite protections outlined in the Clean Air Act, Rolfes said. Affected regions include St. John the Baptist Parish and St. James Parish.
“If you remove the politics and remove ideology from it, what are we talking about?” she said. “What we are talking about is children who are breathing really polluted air.”
In the wake of the federal court decision, Rolfes said the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and other groups would make appeals to the federal government in different ways, talk with investors and raise questions about impacts of rising property insurance costs in the state.
“We don't expect the state of Louisiana to protect us because the state does not protect us," she said. “We have always operated with the understanding that we have to take matters in our own hands and to achieve our goals in spite of our state.”
Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, said the EPA was unable to provide a legal basis for forcing the state to accept actions based on race.
“When the EPA refused to explain its reasoning for threatening millions in federal funding in Louisiana and other states, we sued to require (the EPA to) explain itself to a federal judge,” Murrill said in a prepared statement. “That judge agreed the EPA is wrong.”