EPA Permanently Blocked From Reviewing Disparate Discrimination Claims in Louisiana

The U.S. Justice Department and Environmental Protection Agency can no longer address disparate impact harms in Louisiana where communities have been impacted by environmental pollution after a Trump-era federal judge determined that those actions conflict with the Civil Rights Act.

U.S. District Judge James Cain Jr. of the Western District of Louisiana, an appointee of Donald Trump — following up his January temporary injunction — permanently blocked the federal government from enforcing disparate impact regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, “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,” he wrote in a brief two-page order.

Environmental organizations say the ruling could have potentially devastating impacts on environmental and civil rights justice in Louisiana.

“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,” Earthjustice Vice President for Healthy Communities Patrice Simms said in an emailed release Friday.

Enforcement of Title VI regulations would guard against, for instance, placing polluting industry primarily in lower income Black neighborhoods and would oversee federal regulation of basic services, such as drinking water.

The case stems from a dispute that gained momentum in the last few years and came to a decisive point a year ago after the Environmental Protection Agency abruptly pulled back from investigating claims of environmental discrimination in an area of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley” because of the high volume of refinery pollution and large number of cancer cases there.

The Thursday ruling leaves Louisiana as the only state without protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights act under which community members in every other state who feel they have been impacted by disparate environmental discrimination can make a claim.

In May 2023, then-attorney general Jeff Landry — who is now governor of Louisiana — sued the Environmental Protection Agency to stop it from investigating environmental discrimination claims that accuse the state of environmental harms imposed on minority communities, after which investigations from the EPA quickly stopped.

In Cain’s memorandum ruling granting the temporary injunction, he determined that Title VI works to prevent intentional discrimination and the disparate harms the EPA was finding in the state’s actions did not fall under the statute.

“Defendants have constructed Title VI to allow it to regulate beyond the statute’s plain text and by doing so, invade the purview of the state’s domain,” he wrote.

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Louisiana is the first state to have taken such action, and Earthjustice said in an emailed statement Friday that other states are likely to follow suit.

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