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"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.
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."
"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," said an EPA official, but advocates said the move was "long overdue."
Taking a rare step to "prevent imminent hazard," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday issued an emergency order suspending all uses of an herbicide that has been linked to irreversible health risks for unborn babies.
The EPA issued the order after years of pushing AMVAC Chemical Corporation, the sole manufacturer of dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate, to submit data about the risks posed by the chemical, which is also known as Dacthal and DCPA.
The agency estimated in 2023 that a fetus could be exposed to levels of DCPA four to 20 times greater than the safe limit, if a pregnant person handled products treated with the herbicide.
The chemical is used on crops including broccoli, onions, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts in the U.S., but has been banned since 2009 in the European Union.
Exposed fetuses can suffer effects including low birth weight, impaired brain development and motor skills, and decreased I.Q., according to the agency.
"DCPA is so dangerous that it needs to be removed from the market immediately," Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Chemical Safety, said in statement. "In this case, pregnant women who may never even know they were exposed could give birth to babies that experience irreversible lifelong health problems."
"Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
The Environmental Working Group (EWG) called the suspension of DCPA "welcome news," but said it was "long overdue." The group's research found that even though the EPA has collected evidence of DCPA's health risks, up to 200,000 pounds of the herbicide were sprayed on crops in California in some recent years.
"For years, EWG and other public health advocates have warned about the serious risks the weedkiller poses to farmworkers, pregnant people, and other vulnerable populations," said senior toxicologist Alexis Temkin. "Countless people have been exposed to DCPA while the EPA abdicated its responsibility. The agency should have taken action decades ago, when it first identified the human health risks posed by this toxic crop chemical."
Mily Treviño Sauceda, executive director of Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, also known as the National Farmworkers Women's Alliance, said the emergency order was "a great first step that we hope will be in a series of others that are based on listening to farmworkers, protecting our reproductive health, and safeguarding our families."
"Alianza is pleased to see the EPA make this historic decision," she said. "As an organization led by farmworker women, we know intimately the harm that pesticides, including dimethyl tetrachloroterephthalate... can inflict on our bodies and communities."
William Jordan, a volunteer with the Environmental Protection Network and a former deputy director for programs in the EPA's Office of Pesticide Programs, noted that the agency made the emergency order and bypassed the lengthy process of canceling DCPA's approval due to the harm the chemical causes—the first time in 40 years that the EPA has taken the step.
"The Environmental Protection Network endorses the strong regulatory action taken by EPA to address the extraordinary risks to unborn children posed by the use of pesticides containing DCPA," said Jordan. "EPA's order immediately suspending all sales, distribution, and use of DCPA products is the only way to avoid the harm to children that would result from continued use of this dangerous pesticide."
"Basically the entire infrastructure of how the EPA considers science and develops rules is very much under attack," a nonprofit director said.
A second Trump administration would cripple the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's ability to protect the public from toxic "forever chemicals," The Guardian reported Sunday, citing experts inside and outside the agency.
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), a class of about 16,000 synthetic compounds that break down only very slowly, have been linked to a wide array of serious medical conditions including cancer. The EPA under the Biden administration has instituted limits on PFAS levels in drinking water and other PFAS regulations that industry groups oppose.
Experts warn that allies of Republican nominee Donald Trump aim not just to roll back Biden-era regulations but fundamentally reshape the agency.
"Basically the entire infrastructure of how [the] EPA considers science and develops rules is very much under attack," Erik Olson, legislative director at the Natural Resource Defense Council, told The Guardian.
An unnamed EPA employee told the newspaper that a second Trump administration would seek to disempower agency experts and let political appointees make key regulatory decisions.
"They want a small group of 20 people making the rules, and the rest of the agency can go to hell as far as they care," said the EPA employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Project 2025, a roadmap for Republican governance produced by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, proposes deregulation of PFAS, narrowing the definition of the class of toxic compounds, and elimination of the EPA office that assesses chemicals' toxicity.
Project 2025, to the extent that it's known about, has proven unpopular with the American public, and Trump has tried to distance himself from the plan, but has close links to its authors, at least 140 of whom worked in the former president's administration.
Project 2025's proposals on forever chemicals are aligned with the aims of the American Chemistry Council, the fourth largest lobbying group in the country. During his first term, Trump appointed ACC leaders to key positions in the EPA, and critics of the former president argue that his second administration would be even more unabashedly pro-industry.
"The Trump administration learned some lessons and would be much more surgical and effective at affixation next time," the NRDC's Olson said.
The unnamed EPA employee said a Trump victory might even mean the abolishment of the EPA's entire Office of Research and Development.
ACC members 3M and DuPont developed PFAS in the mid-20th century and used them in a wide range of products, even with knowledge of their toxicity and the way that the accumulate in the human body, according to a series of exposés in recent years, notably by the journalist Sharon Lerner in her work at ProPublica and The Intercept. A recent article of Lerner's in The New Yorker showed that 3M long concealed the dangers of PFAS.