Federal judge permanently blocks EPA ‘disparate impact’ civil rights enforcement in Louisiana

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from considering disparate environmental harms in Louisiana in its enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, making permanent a temporary hold he issued in January.

In the ruling, Judge James Cain of the Western District of Louisiana, a former President Trump appointee, sided with the state of Louisiana in prohibiting the EPA’s Office of External Civil Rights Compliance and the Justice Department from enforcing the provision “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.”

Cain ruled in January that the Civil Rights Act only authorizes enforcement in cases of intentional discrimination.

The ruling came shortly after the EPA announced it was ending an investigation into “Cancer Alley,” a predominantly Black and low-income section of Louisiana that is a hub of petrochemical production and has disproportionately high cancer rates relative to the country at large.

Cain declined a request from the federal government to dismiss Louisiana’s case after the end of the investigation, ruling that the state still had a right to “unambiguous clarity concerning Defendants’ power to regulate beyond the plain text of Title VI.”

Environmental advocacy group Earthjustice blasted the ruling in a statement Friday.

“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 a statement. “Louisiana’s residents, its environmental justice communities, deserve the same Title VI protections as the rest of the nation.”

The Thursday ruling comes after the Supreme Court ruled this summer against the so-called Chevron deference, under which federal agencies were given broader latitude to interpret federal law.