A federal judge has barred the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from using a section of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 to protect Louisiana’s minority communities from “disparate” harm from air or water pollution.
Judge James Cain Jr. handed down the permanent injunction Aug. 22 in favor of the state of Louisiana in its litigation against the federal agency. The judgment blocks the EPA and Department of Justice from “enforcing the Title VI disparate-impact requirements … against any entity in the state of Louisiana, or requiring compliance with those requirements as a condition of past, existing or future awards of financial assistance to any entity in the state of Louisiana.”
Cain also made it a point to bar enforcement of any such disparate-impact requirement that has not been ratified by the president. The ruling only applies to Louisiana, but environmentalists are now concerned that other states might push for similar legal restrictions against the EPA.
The nonprofit group Earthjustice said the decision will make it more difficult for the federal government to address “disparate harm” resulting from decisions in Louisiana involving basic services, such as the provision of clean water, sewer services and health care.
“Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations, only to now have one court give it a permanent free pass to abandon its responsibilities,” Patrice Simms, Earthjustice’s vice president for healthy communities, said in a prepared statement. “Louisiana’s residents, its environmental justice communities, deserve the same Title VI protections as the rest of the nation.”
The Biden administration began investigating civil rights complaints in Louisiana and in particular allegations that an industrial region between Baton Rouge and New Orleans – dubbed “Cancer Alley” – had overburdened minority communities with pollution impacts compared to white communities. But last year, former Attorney General and now-Gov. Jeff Landry sued the EPA over its civil rights and social justice policies.
“... EPA officials have lost sight of the agency’s actual environmental mission, and instead decided to moonlight as social justice warriors fixated on race,” Landry’s lawsuit stated. “To that end, EPA officials declare compliance with environmental law and actual environmental standards is not enough: To avoid loss of federal funds, states must also satisfy EPA’s increasingly warped vision of ‘environmental justice’ and ‘equity.’”
The complaint argued that the EPA’s “disparate impact” policy expanded the agency’s authority beyond actual environmental standards in violation of the 14th Amendment and congressional intent.
“Put succinctly, EPA frequently does not care about the content of air and water emissions, but only the color of the skin of those proximate to them,” the lawsuit said. “That dystopian nightmare violates the Civil Rights Act.”
Despite Cain’s judgment last week, federal environmental regulators pledged to fulfill their duties under the law.
“The Justice Department and EPA remain committed to enforcing civil rights law, consistent with the court’s order,” an EPA spokesperson said in an email to the Louisiana Record.
Last week, the EPA’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance also provided a written guidance on implementing federal regulations in line with Title VI, though it acknowledged that the federal agency will not impose or enforce any “disparate-impact or cumulative-impact analysis requirements” against Louisiana agencies under Title VI.