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civil rights act
Federal Judge Gives Louisiana Polluters a 'Free Pass' to Harm Communities of Color
"Louisiana has given industrial polluters open license to poison Black and brown communities for generations," and the new ruling from a Trump-appointed judge will only magnify the problem, a campaigner said.
Aug 23, 2024
A right-wing federal judge in Louisiana on Thursday permanently blocked two federal agencies from enforcing civil rights legislation that could protect Black communities from disproportionate pollution in the state, drawing condemnation from environmental justice advocates.
The two-page ruling, issued by U.S. District Court Judge James Cain, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 by then-President Donald Trump, is a setback in the push for accountability for corporate polluters, most notably in "Cancer Alley," a roughly 85-mile stretch that runs along the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.
Cancer Alley is home to a disproportionate number of poor and working-class Black people who have highly escalated risks of cancer thanks to the long line of petrochemical plants in the corridor. A recent study showed that the air there is far worse than previously realized.
"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, a vice president at Earthjustice, said in a statement.
The ruling forbids the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Justice from enforcing "disparate-impact requirements" under Title VI the 1964 Civil Rights Act in the state of Louisiana. The ruling affects permitting for industrial projects and could, according to Earthjustice, even be applied to "basic services such as sewage, drinking water, and health services." Cain opted not to make the ruling effective nationwide.
The main events leading up to Thursday's decision began in January 2022, when Earthjustice filed a complaint to the EPA on behalf of St. John the Baptist Parish, a majority-Black community in the heart of Cancer Alley. The EPA then opened an investigation into whether Louisiana state agencies had failed to protect the parish from environmental health threats. The agency was preparing to negotiate reforms with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. This was part of a nationwide EPA effort to tackle environmental racism.
However, Louisiana, like other states, fired back. In May 2023, then-Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is now governor, filed a lawsuit—the same lawsuit Cain ultimately ruled on—against the EPA to block the investigation. The next month, the EPA dropped its investigation, disappointing parish residents and human rights groups. The Intercept later reported that the agency dropped the investigation because of fear the state's case would reach the U.S. Supreme Court.
Cain could then have dropped Louisiana's suit, but, in a move that may have been aimed at preventing future such investigations, he moved forward with it, issuing a 77-page temporary injunction in January that laid the groundwork for today's far briefer decision, which made the ruling permanent.
In the temporary injunction, Cain put forth ahistorical and power-blind arguments about race that are common in right-wing circles.
"To be sure, if a decision-maker has to consider race, to decide, it has indeed participated in racism," the judge wrote. "Pollution does not discriminate."
Earthjustice warned that though Cain's ruling applies only in Louisiana, "it may embolden other states to seek similar exceptions and create a chilling effect on civil rights enforcement by other federal agencies."
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'Major Blow': Trump-Appointed Judge Bars EPA From Enforcing Civil Rights Protections
"Instead of fixing the discriminatory permitting programs that have created sacrifice zones like Cancer Alley, Louisiana is fighting tooth and nail to keep them in place," said one advocate.
Jan 24, 2024
A ruling in Louisiana by a federal judge appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump will make it even harder for communities to fight environmental racism and the establishment of "sacrifice zones," said one advocacy group on Tuesday.
U.S. District Court Judge James Cain, Jr., appointed in 2018, ruled in favor of Louisiana eight months after GOP Attorney General Jeff Landry sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), aiming to stop the Biden administration from opening investigations into violations of Title VI under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Title VI prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating against state residents based on race and national origin, and allows residents to petition the EPA arguing that state agencies have intentionally discriminated or disparately impacted a particular community.
In the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Cain ruled that Title VI requirements amount to “government overreach” and said in the decision that “pollution does not discriminate.”
While pollution itself does not discriminate against communities, numerous studies have shown the impact of environmental injustice and racism.
One paper published in 2022 by Tulane Environmental Law Clinic researchers found that communities of color face 7-21 times the amount of pollution that white communities experience and pointed to so-called “Cancer Alley”—an 85-mile stretch in Louisiana where petrochemical companies have built dozens of plants and medical experts have seen a disproportionate number of cancer cases—as an area that’s faced environmental injustice as a result of the state’s permitting process.
As Prismreported last week, the EPA was close to holding the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ) accountable for putting the historically Black community of St. John the Baptist Parish at risk last year by greenlighting pollution-causing petrochemical plants near the town in Cancer Alley—but it halted a year-long investigation last June, a month after Landry filed his lawsuit.
At the time, Mary Hampton of Concerned Citizens of St. John told Earthjustice, which had called for the EPA's investigation on behalf of residents, that the agency's decision made residents "feel like our lives don't matter."
"We are suffering, we are dying," said Hampton. "That's a hard thing to deal with."
On Tuesday, Sam Sankar, senior vice president of programs for Earthjustice, said that Cain's injunction will allow Louisiana to continue allowing companies to pollute Cancer Alley without considering "disparate environmental impacts."
"Instead of fixing the discriminatory permitting programs that have created sacrifice zones like Cancer Alley, Louisiana is fighting tooth and nail to keep them in place," said Sankar. "The public health crisis in St. John the Baptist Parish shows us why we need Title VI: EPA needs to be able to use our civil rights laws to stop states from running permitting programs that perpetuate environmental injustice."
As The Intercept reported last week, the EPA also backed away from another Title VI case last year—one alleging that the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy had violated the law by issuing permits to an asphalt plant in a low-income, majority-Black town where residents were also at increased risk for asthma.
"Experts say that the EPA appears to be shying away from certain Civil Rights Act investigations in states that are hostile to environmental justice, due to fears that Landry's suit or similar efforts could make their way to the conservative Supreme Court," wrote Delaney Hogan.
On Tuesday, Hogan suggested Cain's ruling makes it more likely that the Supreme Court could eventually "crush the EPA's ability to pursue environmental justice."
"I think we can all see where this is headed," said Hogan.
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Lawsuit Targets Harvard Legacy Admissions That Privilege Wealthy, Largely White Alumni
"Your family's last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process," the main litigant's director asserted.
Jul 03, 2023
In the wake of last week's U.S. Supreme Court ruling ending race-based affirmative action in college admissions, a coalition of civil rights groups on Monday filed a lawsuit challenging Harvard University's preferential treatment of applicants related to alumni and donors—a policy the litigants say "severely damages and harms" prospective students of color.
The lawsuit—filed by Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR) on behalf of Chica Project, African Community Economic Development of New England, and Greater Boston Latino Network—claims that Harvard's donor and legacy admissions preferences violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and asks the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to "take all measures necessary to
enforce Title VI and ensure Harvard's compliance with the statute and applicable regulations."
"Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?"
The complaint notes that Harvard applicants related to donors were nearly seven times more likely to be accepted compared to other applicants during the years 2014-19, while legacy applicants were nearly six times likelier to be accepted. Roughly 17% of graduating Harvard students in 2019 had one or both parents who attended the school, while 28% had parents or other relatives who were alumni.
"There's no birthright to Harvard. As the Supreme Court recently noted, 'eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,'" LCR executive director Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal said in a statement.
"There should be no way to identify who your parents are in the college application process. Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?" he added. "Your family's last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process."
According to the suit:
Each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly white students—not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are. Applicants whose relatives are wealthy donors to Harvard, or whose parents are Harvard alumni, are flagged at the outset of Harvard's admissions process and are granted special solicitude and extra "tips" throughout. The students who receive these special preferences... are significantly more likely to be accepted than other applicants, and constitute up to 15% of Harvard's admitted students.
The students who receive this preferential treatment—based solely on familial ties—are overwhelmingly white. Nearly 70% of donor-related applicants are white, and nearly 70% of legacy applicants are also white.
At the same time that donor and legacy preferences disproportionately advantage white applicants, they systematically disadvantage students of color, including Black, Latinx, and Asian Americans.
The LCR lawsuit comes just days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a pair of casesthat affirmative action admissions programs at two universities are unconstitutional. Dissenting, Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the court's right-wing supermajority of "entrenching inequality in education."
"Harvard's practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni—who have done nothing to deserve it—must end."
Last year, U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) introduced the Fair College Admissions for Students Act, which would bar colleges and universities from giving preferential treatment to children of alumni and donors.
"Harvard's practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni—who have done nothing to deserve it—must end," LCR litigation fellow Michael Kippins said in a statement. "Particularly in light of last week's decision from the Supreme Court, it is imperative that the federal government act now to eliminate this unfair barrier that systematically disadvantages students of color."
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