Environmental Justice

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The latest news on EPA and Biden administration efforts to address the effects of environmental releases on poor and minority communities, including permit reviews, civil rights investigations, and funding priorities.

EPA Funding Freeze Defense Falters, Forcing Increased Reliance On Venue

EPA’s central defense of its sweeping grant freezes and terminations is increasingly collapsing under scrutiny in federal courts, forcing officials to rely on claims that trial courts lack jurisdiction because such suits belong in federal claims courts, which hear contract disputes. As litigation over the Trump administration’s funding freezes has played out, EPA and other agencies have argued that their individual grant reviews show that the Biden-era grants are no longer in line with agency priorities or fail to prioritize...

Environmentalists challenge Louisiana de facto air monitoring ban

Environmental groups are filing suit in federal district court seeking to have a new Louisiana law banning community air monitoring declared unconstitutional, warning that the law violates the First Amendment’s free speech protections, as well as provisions in the Clean Air Act. The May 22 suit , Rise St. James, et al. v. Courtney Burdette, et al. , in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana says the Louisiana Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act (CAMRA) unlawfully imposes restrictions...

Environmentalists Charge EPA Using Grants To Suppress Climate, EJ Speech

Environmentalists are charging that EPA is using its grants as leverage to pressure them into scrubbing disfavored ideas and “forbidden terms,” including climate change and environmental justice (EJ), from both grant-funded projects and those not receiving federal funding -- even if it means violating their missions or the grants’ original purpose. By requiring nonprofits “to remove terms like ‘environmental justice,’ ‘climate change,’ and ‘equity’ from their grant materials, and suppressing how groups speak about their own work externally, the EPA...

EJ backers urge 4th Circuit to uphold injunction on Trump’s DEI EOs

Plaintiffs in a case challenging President Donald Trump’s executive orders (EOs) barring “diversity, equity & inclusion” (DEI), which have been used to target EPA’s environmental justice (EJ) programs, are asking an appeals court to reinstate a lower court’s order blocking the EOs. The plaintiffs, including the City of Baltimore, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a May 9 brief in National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, et al. v. Donald Trump, et al....

Senate Democrats seek hearing on DOJ Civil Rights Division

As the Trump administration guts use of the Civil Rights Act (CRA) for environmental and other purposes, Senate Democrats are seeking an investigation into the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division (CRD), amid reports that division lawyers are leaving en masse. Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) and other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are asking Republican members to schedule an oversight hearing to address what they say are Trump administration efforts to “dismantle” the CRD. Welch is joined by fellow...

EJ Advocates Say DOJ Wrongly Axed Septic System Program As ‘DEI’

Environmental justice (EJ) advocates say the Department of Justice (DOJ) wrongly ended a landmark Biden-era civil rights agreement with Alabama’s public health department after incorrectly determining that the program, which provided septic systems in a low-income rural area, is a “diversity, equity & inclusion” (DEI) initiative that Trump officials oppose. The advocates say they are happy that state officials say they want to continue the program even if DOJ does not but now must scramble to find another source to...

OIG to investigate EPA EJ grant program

EPA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) is launching an evaluation of the agency’s oversight of “Community Change” grant applications, which were distributed by the now-shuttered Office of Environmental Justice & External Civil Rights (OEJECR) to bolster EJ areas. OIG issued an April 29 notice to Theresa Segovia, deputy assistant administrator of OEJECR, that says it initiated the evaluation “based on an OIG Hotline complaint.” The office will “determine whether the EPA implemented effective controls during the selection of Track I...

Trump Tells DOJ To Lead Rescission Of Civil Rights Disparate Impact Rules

President Donald Trump is ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to revoke its Civil Rights Act Title VI rules that require federal funding recipients to comply with the rights law, and to work with EPA and other agencies to revoke their rules if they include “disparate-impact liability,” a tool Biden officials used to address environmental justice (EJ) concerns. Trump’s action to remove “disparate impact” liability, which sets a lower bar than the “intentional discrimination” required for a private right of...

EPA Starts Process For Staff Firings In EJ Office, Amid Broader RIF Fears

EPA has formally notified the agency’s civil rights office, as well as regional environmental justice (EJ) divisions, of agency plans to conduct a “reduction in force” (RIF) of agency staff, justifying the move as in line with Trump administration executive orders targeting diversity programs and directing workforce “optimization.” While the notification, in the form of an April 21 memorandum , offers confirmation of widely expected efforts to target EJ-related activities, a former EPA official tells Inside EPA the effort...

Environmentalists Challenge Trump’s Removal Of EJSCREEN, Other Tools

Environmental groups are suing EPA and other agencies for removing without notice online tools that helped the public identify and understand risks to environmental justice (EJ) and other communities, including EPA’s longstanding EJSCREEN tool that allowed users to identify areas historically overburdened from pollution. EPA in late January and February removed “numerous tools and pages that provided important information concerning the environment” without any notice or a reasoned explanation, argues Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), Environmental Integrity Project...

DOJ Terminates Biden-Era Civil Rights Settlement On Sewage Discharges

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is terminating a settlement it reached with the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH) addressing raw sewage discharge in a poor, majority Black area of the state, calling it an “illegal” agreement focused on diversity equity & inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice (EJ). DOJ on April 11 announced that the termination of the voluntary informal resolution agreement is “effective immediately.” The May 2023 agreement was the Biden DOJ’s first EJ- and civil rights-focused settlement, and...

Fired EPA EJ Staffers Bring Class-Action Complaint To Special Counsel

Nearly 170 EPA employees who worked on environmental justice (EJ) issues are bringing a class-action complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OCS), arguing the agency’s decision to place them on administrative leave is wrong and that they should be reintegrated into the EPA workforce with new assignments. The April 11 complaint says the 168 workers from the now-shuttered EPA Office of Environmental Justice & External Civil Rights (OEJECR) are in limbo, after they were placed on paid administrative...

5th Circuit Allows Suit Seeking Petrochemical Plant Ban In ‘Cancer Alley’

The 5th Circuit is reversing a federal district court and allowing environmental justice (EJ) groups to proceed with their civil rights suit seeking a moratorium on new and expanded petrochemical plants in Louisiana’s “cancer alley,” offering a win for advocates even as the Trump administration is broadly attacking such EJ work. The April 9 decision from a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in Inclusive Louisiana, et al. v. St. James Parish, et...

EPA’s Enforcement Priority Memo ‘Danced Up To’ Legal Line, Experts Say

EPA’s recent memo detailing new enforcement priorities is expected to significantly curb enforcement, an approach that comes close to being unlawful, legal experts say, but may survive scrutiny because it contains significant caveats, including references to statutory obligations, and can rely on agencies’ broad enforcement discretion, legal experts say. They’ve “danced up to the line” of legality in the memo, Gary Jonesi, a former long-time EPA official who recently retired from the Office of Enforcement & Compliance Assurance (OECA), tells...

EPA Warns States Not To Use Federal Money To Advance EJ Programs

EPA is telling states that if they want to keep advancing their environmental justice (EJ) programs, they may not use agency money to do so, teeing up a potential conflict in Democratic-led states with such programs, including Colorado, Illinois, New Jersey, Minnesota, Massachusetts, New York and Maryland. “If a state wishes to waste non-EPA taxpayer dollars on so-called ‘environmental justice’ instead of remediating environmental issues in their communities, that’s the state’s prerogative,” an EPA spokesperson says. “EPA is committed to...

EPA Orders Grant Scrubbed Of Equity, Climate Terms, Terminates Others

EPA has terminated without explanation millions of dollars in environmental justice (EJ) grants to major cities and nonprofits and ordered at least one other award purged of forbidden terms surrounding EJ, racial equity and climate change though it appears to allow the originally funded activity to continue, new court filings show. EPA’s actions are detailed in March 31 filings in Sustainability Institute, et al. v. Trump , litigation that is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of...

Democrats Urge EPA To Restore Grants After Lawyers Warn Of Violations

Democrats on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW) are urging EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to rescind the termination of hundreds of environmental justice (EJ) and other grants after internal emails showed agency lawyers warned the actions were unlawful but top managers left it up to grantees to challenge them in court. In a March 25 letter , the senators, led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the committee’s ranking Democrat, raise concerns about EPA’s actions taken in accordance with...

CRS Underscores EPA Statutory Duties To Include EJ In Some Decisions

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) is warning about “uncertainty over the scope and specific impacts” of Trump executive orders (EOs) rolling back prior EOs on environmental justice (EJ), given that some environmental laws require EPA to include EJ-like considerations in its decisions. “The revocation of previous EOs [mandating EJ considerations] does not change EPA’s responsibilities under these pollution control statutes,” says the Feb. 24 report , “Trump Administration Environmental-Justice-Related Executive Orders: Potential Implications for EPA Programs.” For example, under section...

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