October, 02 2020, 12:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Suzanne Novak, Earthjustice, Snovak@earthjustice.org, (212) 845-4981
Jonathan J. Smith, Earthjustice, jjsmith@earthjustice.org, (212) 845-7379
Federal Court Requires EPA to Enforce Civil Rights
Court rules in favor of communities, holding EPA accountable for failing to investigate civil rights complaints in a timely manner.
WASHINGTON
Communities across the country applaud a ruling by a federal judge requiring EPA to follow the law and investigate civil rights complaints in a timely manner.
The decision resulted from a lawsuit filed by community-based groups in 2015 against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency challenging the agency's failure to investigate their civil rights complaints for more than a decade in violation of federal law.
District Court Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong today denied EPA's motion to alter the court's judgment to remove from it an order specifically requiring EPA to follow the law for civil rights complaints filed in the future.
EPA is responsible for ensuring that public and private recipients of its funding comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. EPA's rules require that the agency complete its investigations into civil rights complaints filed under Title VI within 180 days, but time and again, EPA has failed to complete investigations in a timely way, sometimes for decades, leaving community groups with no recourse. Today the court reaffirmed that the EPA must comply with the law.
Father Phil Schmitter of the St. Francis Prayer Center stated, "The EPA has a long history of failing to enforce civil rights." In 1992, the St. Francis Prayer Center filed a complaint with the EPA alleging that Michigan's state environmental department discriminated by approving a permit for the Genessee Power Station in an area of Flint, Michigan that already had more than 200 polluting facilities. EPA accepted the complaint for investigation, but then the complaint gathered dust for decades.
In 2017, 25 years after the St. Francis Prayer Center filed its complaint, EPA finally issued a finding of discrimination. "It wasn't until we went to court, along with other community groups whose complaints were also ignored by EPA, that EPA took any action," said Fr. Schmitter.
"Meanwhile, residents of Flint have lived in the shadow of polluting facilities. EPA failed to hold the state accountable for discrimination, allowing our state agency to carry on with its ways for decades longer than it should have."
"If EPA had investigated St. Francis Prayer's Center's complaint in a timely manner 20 years ago, we might have seen improvements in state procedures and policies that could have avoided future tragedies like the Flint drinking water crisis," said Suzanne Novak, staff attorney at Earthjustice. "That is why access to the courts is so critical. Without accountability to a court, EPA might never have acted at all."
The ruling today came in a case filed on behalf of Californians for Renewable Energy (CARE), Ashurst Bar/Smith Community Organization, Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping, the St. Francis Prayer Center, Sierra Club, and an individual, Michael Boyd. The plaintiffs alleged that EPA failed to issue preliminary findings regarding their administrative complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act within 180 days as required by law.
The court had previously issued a decision in favor of the community groups, finding EPA's delay in handling their cases violated the law. Today's decision rejected EPA's objection to the court's judgment. "EPA seems to have more interest in litigating against communities than enforcing civil rights law. This has to change." said Phyllis Gosa, who filed a complaint in 2003 against the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. "We filed a civil rights complaint to address discrimination in environmental permitting. It's high time EPA took timely action to address racial disparities in exposure to pollution," said Michael Boyd, who filed the 2000 CARE complaint to challenge permitting decisions by state and regional air agencies that had racially disproportionate impacts on communities of color in Pittsburg, California.
A scathing report from NBC and Center for Public Integrity uncovered that more than 90% of civil rights complaints to the EPA were rejected or dismissed. In fact, the EPA's External Civil Rights Compliance Office had only once formally found that anyone's civil rights were violated when the lawsuit was filed in 2015. The St. Francis Prayer Center complaint from Flint was highlighted in a report issued just this week by EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG), which found that EPA had failed to provide the necessary oversight to ensure that recipients of EPA funding comply with Title VI. "EPA continued to litigate this case for years, challenging even a court mandate that essentially said that the agency needs to follow the law. Instead, EPA should have been taking the steps outlined in the OIG report to address the racial inequalities in environmental decision-making that have led to gross racial disparities in the location of polluting facilities and exposure to environmental contamination," said Marianne Engelman Lado, the director of the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School.
"The court has spoken. Which makes it a good day in the long-standing battle for civil rights in this country." said Neil Carman, who had filed a complaint against a Texas state agency challenging its decision to grant a permit amendment to allow increases in emissions at a Mobil Oil facility in Beaumont, Texas, that is sited next to an environmental justice community suffering from the refinery's air pollution.
"Even though the court ruling brings some justice, at the end of the day, action in defense of civil rights is more necessary than ever. States continue to give permits to more and more facilities in already polluted areas, and EPA still doesn't have an effective civil rights program," said Deborah Reade, who worked with the Citizens for Alternatives for Radioactive Dumping on a complaint filed with EPA against the New Mexico Environmental Department for discriminating against Spanish-speaking residents.
The judge's order is attached and additional information on the cases that led to the lawsuit can be found here. The community groups are represented by Earthjustice and the Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School.
Client Contacts
Environmental Justice Clinic at Vermont Law School: Marianne Engelman Lado / marianne.lado@gmail.com / (917) 608-2053
Californians for Renewable Energy (CARE): Michael Boyd / (408) 891-9677
Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping (CARD): Deborah Reade / (505) 986-9284
Ashurst Bar / Smith Community Organization: Ronald Smith / (334)-787-0329
Phyllis Gosa / rphgosa@yahoo.com / (334) 375-3123
St. Francis Prayer Center: Father Phil Schmitter / antonio7327@gmail.com / (810)-252-4459
Sierra Club: Neil Carman / neil_carman@greenbuilder.com / (512)-663-9594
Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth, and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. We bring about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations, coalitions and communities.
800-584-6460LATEST NEWS
Stateless Palestinian Woman Details 'Very Traumatizing' Abuse Suffered in ICE Detention
Trump administration immigration officials reportedly dismissed Ward Sakeik's ordeal as a "sob story."
Jul 06, 2025
A newlywed Palestinian woman from Texas released from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention earlier this week says she was shackled for long periods, denied food and water, and subjected to other human rights abuses during nearly five months in ICE custody—all because she is a stateless person.
Ward Sakeik, 22, was born in Saudi Arabia to Palestinian parents from Gaza. Because Saudi Arabia does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of foreign nationals, Sakeik was officially stateless when her family legally emigrated to the United States when she was 8 years old.
“I was moved around like cattle.”
Ward Sakeik, US college graduate and homeowner, speaks out following 140 days in ICE hellhole pic.twitter.com/bNTgs7362h
— World Socialist Web Site (@WSWS_Updates) July 5, 2025
Sakeik's parents subsequently applied for—and were denied—asylum in the U.S. but were allowed to remain legally in the country pending routine check-ins with ICE.
After graduating high school and the University of Texas, Arlington, starting a wedding photography business, marrying a U.S. citizen, and beginning the process of obtaining a green card, Sakeik and her husband went on their honeymoon in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She was detained shortly after arriving back in the United States after Customs and Border Protection agents flagged her for flying over international waters—a move that Department of Homeland Security officials said violated immigration policy.
"After a few hours from returning from our honeymoon, I was put in a gray tracksuit and shackles," Sakeik said at a press conference following her release. "I was handcuffed for 16 hours without any water or food on the bus. I have moved around like cattle. And the U.S. government attempted to dump me in a part of the world where I don't know where I'm going and what I'm doing or anything."
"We were not given any water or food, and we could smell the driver eating Chick-fil-A," she continued. "We would ask for water, bang on the door for food, and he would just turn up the radio and act like he wasn't listening to us."
Sakeik said unhygienic conditions at the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas—where an ICE officer was shot in the neck during a Friday evening attack—caused widespread illness among detainees.
"The restrooms are also very, very, very unhygienic," she said. "The beds have rust everywhere. They're not properly maintained. And cockroaches, grasshoppers, spiders, you name it, are all over the facility. Girls would get bit."
"I wouldn't wish this upon anybody," Sakeik said during a Saturday interview on CNN. "It was very hard, very traumatizing, and very, very difficult."
Eric Lee, an attorney for Sakeik, told CNN that immigration officials dismissed Sakeik's account as a "sob story."
"I guess what we would ask the American people is, 'Who are they gonna believe, their lying eyes or the statements of the people who are responsible for carrying out what are really crimes against humanity here in the United States?'" Lee added.
Sakeik said she now plans to advocate on behalf of women and girls imprisoned by ICE.
"I... want the world to know that the women who do come here come here for a better life, but they're criminalized for that," she said. "They are dehumanized, and they're stripped away from their rights. We have been treated as a 'less-than' just simply for wanting a better life."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Exactly What We Would Expect': Climate Scientists Weigh in on Deadly Texas Flooding
"It's not a question of whether climate change played a role—it's only a question of how much," said one expert.
Jul 06, 2025
As the death toll from catastrophic flooding in Texas continued to rise, climate scientists this weekend underscored the link between more frequent and severe extreme weather events and the worsening climate emergency caused primarily by humans burning fossil fuels.
Officials said Sunday that at least 69 people died in the floods, 59 of them in Kerr County. Of the 27 missing girls from Camp Mystic—some of whom were sleeping just 225 feet from the Guadalupe River when its waters surged during flash flooding Friday—11 are still missing.
While some local officials blamed what they said were faulty forecasts from the National Weather Service—which has been hit hard by staffing cuts ordered by the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency in line with Project 2025—meteorologists and climate scientists including Daniel Swain of the University of California, Los Angeles have refuted such allegations, citing multiple NWS warnings of potentially deadly flooding.
However, some experts asserted that vacancies at key NWS posts raise questions about forecasters' ability to coordinate emergency response with local officials.
Climate scientists do concur that human-caused global heating is causing stronger and more frequent extreme weather events including flooding.
"This kind of record-shattering rain (caused by slow-moving torrential thunderstorms) event is *precisely* that which is increasing the fastest in a warming climate," Swain wrote in a statement. "So it's not a question of whether climate change played a role—it's only a question of how much."
As Jeff Masters and Bob Henson wrote Saturday for Yale Climate Connections:
Many studies have confirmed that human-caused climate change is making the heaviest short-term rainfall events more intense, largely by warming the world's oceans and thus sending more water vapor into the atmosphere that can fuel heavy rain events. Sea surface temperatures this week have been as much as 1°F below the 1981-2010 average for early July in the western Gulf [of Mexico] and Caribbean, but up to 1°F above average in the central Gulf. Long-term human-caused warming made the latter up to 10 times more likely, according to the Climate Shift Index from Climate Central.
"The tragic events in Texas are exactly what we would expect in our hotter, climate-changed, world," Bill McGuire, professor emeritus of geophysics and climate hazards at University College London, said Saturday. "There has been an explosion in extreme weather in recent years, including more devastating flash floods caused by slow-moving, wetter, storms, that dump exceptional amounts of rain over small areas across a short time."
It’s hard to make the Texas flood tragedy worse, except to know that on the same day Trump signed a bill to stop our efforts to defeat the climate change that is causing increased frequency of disastrous floods. And giving us more expensive electricity. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/05/c...
[image or embed]
— Governor Jay Inslee (@govjayinslee.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 9:29 AM
Instead of taking action to combat the planetary emergency, the Trump administration is ramping up fossil fuel production while waging war on clean energy and climate initiatives. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed into law by Trump on Friday slashes the tax credits for electric vehicles and other renewable technologies including wind and solar energy that were a cornerstone of the Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act.
Keep ReadingShow Less
27 Arrested for Defying UK Ban on Nonviolent Pro-Palestine Group
"We oppose genocide—I didn't think that was that controversial—and we support the people who resist genocide," said one arrested protester.
Jul 06, 2025
Metropolitan Police arrested at least 27 protesters who gathered in central London on Saturday to publicly support Palestine Action, a nonviolent direct action group now officially designated a terrorist organization by the U.K. government.
According to Middle East Eye, Palestine defenders including 83-year-old Rev. Sue Parfitt, a former government attorney, an emeritus professor, and health workers gathered by a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, where they held signs reading, "I OPPOSE GENOCIDE, I SUPPORT PALESTINE ACTION."
Members of the group Defend Our Juries informed Metropolitan Police of their plan prior to the demonstration.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring... democracy and human rights in this country are dead."
"We would like to alert you to the fact we may be committing offenses under the Terrorism Act tomorrow, Saturday 5 July, in Parliament Square at about 1pm," the group said in an open letter to Met Commissioner Mark Rowley.
"If we cannot speak freely about the genocide that is occurring, if we cannot condemn those who are complicit in it and express support for those who resist it, then the right to freedom of expression has no meaning, and democracy and human rights in this country are dead," the letter argues.
Parfitt told Novara Media that members of Defend Our Juries were "testing the law."
"I know that we are in the right place doing the right thing," she said. "...We cannot be bystanders."
"We are losing our civil liberties, we must stop that for everybody's sake," Parfitt said in a separate interview with The Guardian.
Prior to his arrest, Defend Our Juries member Tim Crosland, the former government lawyer, told The Guardian that "what we're doing here as a group of priests, teachers, health workers, human rights lawyers [is] we're refusing to be silenced."
"Because it goes to the core of what we believe in: that we oppose genocide—I didn't think that was that controversial—and we support the people who resist genocide," he added. "In theory we are now terrorist supporters and can go to prison for 14 years, which is kind of crazy. I think what we are here to do is just expose the craziness of that."
Crosland said as he was being arrested, "This is what happens in modern day Britain for opposing genocide, it's quite something isn't it?"
A bystander told Novara Media: "I just feel disgusted by this government. I voted for them and they're now arresting people who are calling for a genocide to end. And this is a Labour government, they're meant to have left-wing roots."
Members of the group Defend Our Juries publicly declare their opposition to Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza and their support for the proscribed group Palestine Action while Metropolitan Police officers look on before arresting them during a July 4, 2025 demonstration in London. (Photo: Kristian Buus/In Pictures via Getty Images)
In a statement, Defend Our Juries sarcastically said that "we commend the counter-terrorism police for their decisive action in protecting the people of London from some cardboard signs opposing the genocide in Gaza and expressing support for those taking action to prevent it."
"It's a relief to know that counter-terrorism police have nothing better to do," the group quipped.
Last week, British lawmakers voted to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group after some of its members vandalized two aircraft at a Royal Air Force base in Oxfordshire on June 20. The group—which was founded in 2020 and has also vandalized U.S. President Donald Trump's golf course in Turnberry, Scotland—is known for taking direction action against companies that supply weapons to Israel, which is accused of genocide in an ongoing International Court of Justice case concerning the war on Gaza.
On June 23, U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper announced plans to proscribe the group under Section 3 of the Terrorism Act of 2000, introduced under former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and widely criticized for its overbroad definition of terrorism. The House of Commons voted 385-26 Wednesday in favor of banning Palestine Action and the House of Lords approved the designation Thursday without a vote.
Palestine Action tried to delay the ban via legal action. However, the High Court on Friday denied the group's appeal for interim relief was denied on Friday, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Appeal.
The nonviolent group is now on the same legal footing in Britain as Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Joining or supporting Palestine Action is now punishable by up to 14 years behind bars.
At midnight, Palestine Action will be proscribed under the Terrorism Act.Their real “crime”? Exposing the UK’s role in arming Israel’s genocide.This is a dark day for our democracy.Criminalising non-violent resistance won’t silence the truth.We are all Palestine Action 🇵🇸
[image or embed]
— Zarah Sultana MP (@zarahsultana.bsky.social) July 4, 2025 at 2:38 PM
Earlier this month, a group of United Nations experts urged the U.K. government to not ban Palestine Action.
"We are concerned at the unjustified labeling of a political protest movement as 'terrorist,'" the experts wrote. "According to international standards, acts of protest that damage property, but are not intended to kill or injure people, should not be treated as terrorism."
The U.N. experts warned that under the ban, "individuals could be prosecuted for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and opinion, assembly, association, and participation in political life."
"This would have a chilling effect on political protest and advocacy generally in relation to defending human rights in Palestine," they added.
Hundreds of jurists, artists and entertainers, and others have also decried the ban on Palestine Action.
"Palestine Action is intervening to stop a genocide. It is acting to save life. We deplore the government's decision to proscribe it," Artists for Palestine U.K.—whose members include Tilda Swinton, Paul Weller, Steve Coogan, and others—wrote in a statement last month.
"Labeling non-violent direct action as 'terrorism' is an abuse of language and an attack on democracy," the artists added. "The real threat to the life of the nation comes not from Palestine Action but from the home secretary's efforts to ban it. We call on the government to withdraw its proscription of Palestine Action and to stop arming Israel."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular