Lawsuits Filed In Louisiana To Combat Environmental Racism

Environmental racism has long been an issue in Louisiana. To drive home how big of an issue it’s been, there’s an 85-mile stretch of land called “Cancer Alley,” due to the number of petrochemical plants built in the area. Unsurprisingly, that stretch of land is filled with low-income, predominantly Black communities. In a much-needed win, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit alleging Louisiana’s St James Parish engaged in racist land-use policies can proceed.

According to AP News, the lawsuit calls for a moratorium on further development of petrochemical plants in St. James Parish. The lawsuit, filed by several faith-based community groups, initially stalled out in 2023 after the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Louisiana ruled that the case was filed too late as it focused on a 2014 land-use plan. 

Of the 24 industrial plants listed in the lawsuit, 20 are located in predominantly Black areas of the parish. The area gained the name “Cancer Alley” because residents in the area have some of the highest risks of cancer, chronic respiratory illness, and reproductive issues in America. If that’s not the textbook definition of environmental racism, I truly don’t know what is. 

“We have been sounding the alarm for far too long that a moratorium is needed to halt the expansion of any more polluting industries in our neighborhoods, and too many lives have been lost to cancer,” said Gail LeBoeuf, co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told AP News. 

This is not the only lawsuit combating environmental racism in Louisiana, as another was filed in May targeting a state law that regulates air pollution monitoring. Given that state legislators have clearly done nothing to slow down the development of the petrochemical plants, community groups have taken it upon themselves over the years to use low-cost air monitoring devices to track the pollution being emitted from the various industrial sites throughout Cancer Alley. 

From NPR:

​​Last year, Louisiana lawmakers put new requirements on those community testing activities. The law says that for community groups to allege violations of environmental rules, they have to use federally-approved monitoring equipment, and it sets restrictions for analyzing and sharing the data.

Several community groups said in a complaint in Louisiana federal court on Thursday that the law’s “onerous restrictions” violate their rights to free speech and to petition the government.

“This is just an obvious attempt to keep citizen groups from doing any monitoring,” says David Bookbinder, a lawyer for the plaintiffs and the director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, which helps frontline communities push for tough environmental standards.

The lawsuit alleges that the state law infringes on their First Amendment rights by preventing them from “publicly discussing, advocating for cleanup action, or warning people about potentially dangerous air pollution,” if the data was gathered using devices that don’t meet federal standards. Critics of the law say that the language in the law is vague, and the restrictions listed almost seem designed to prevent community air monitoring altogether.

“If I were a community member, I wouldn’t know what some of these [requirements] meant, and I would probably just stay away from it,” George Wyeth, a former EPA lawyer who isn’t involved in the lawsuit, told NPR.

These cases come as the Trump administration withdrew from a Biden-era lawsuit targeting  Denka Performance Elastomer, a chemical plant in Louisiana whose air pollution was alleged to have adverse effects on the health of the predominantly Black community it’s located in. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cited “ideological overreach” as its reason for dropping the case. 

So, silencing any discussion of race that might make white people uncomfortable is fine, but trying to improve health standards for low-income, Black families is “overreach”. Got it. 

While the lawsuit was dropped, Denka has ceased operations at the plant due to financial woes and regulatory pressure. 

The environmental racism endemic to Cancer Alley has gone on for far too long, and it’s clear the current administration won’t go out of its way to do anything about it. We can only hope that the lawsuits and community-driven efforts to combat the pollution will help slow down this long-standing problem.

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