CEQ Floats Justice40 Screening Tool But Defends Decision To Drop Race

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) has released its long-awaited tool to help federal agencies identify disadvantaged communities eligible for billions of dollars in funding under the administration’s environmental justice (EJ) Justice40 initiative. While the tool includes a series of environmental, economic and other metrics for determining whether communities that are overburdened by pollution and face other disadvantages are eligible for funds under Justice40, the current version of the tool does not include race as a factor, despite...