this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Landry’s suit challenges a key piece of the agency’s regulatory authority: the disparate impact standard, which says that policies that cause disproportionate harm to people of color are in violation of the Civil Rights Act.This enables the EPA to argue that it’s discriminatory for state agencies to keep greenlighting contaminating facilities in communities of color already overburdened by pollution — such as in Cancer Alley — even if official policies do not announce discrimination as their intent.
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.
The agency has never actually withheld funding due to discrimination, but by 2021, a change seemed to be in the air: Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the EPA began to process and pursue over a dozen Title VI environmental justice cases in at least nine states, including Louisiana.
Flint’s case was strikingly similar: Plaintiffs alleged the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy, or EGLE, had violated Title VI by issuing air pollution permits to an asphalt plant in a low-income Black community.
Leonard, of the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, noted that while the EPA’s fears of a Supreme Court decision undermining their authority are well-founded, advocates and attorneys have always known that the agency would face pushback, should it decide to take more forceful action on civil rights enforcement.
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