Our most vulnerable communities are being poisoned — by the state

One year ago, the Supreme Court forbade the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from regulating the pollutants that pose the greatest threat to our civilization: greenhouse gasses. Sadly, this ruling is part of a long line from a court dead set on weakening the EPA and defining the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts nearly out of existence.

It’s another decision based on the “major questions doctrine,” a bogus legal theory the court made out of whole cloth to strike down any law the right-wing majority dislikes. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the majority “does not have a clue about how to address climate change. […yet it] appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision-maker on climate policy.”

So much attention has been paid to the Supreme Court’s dreadful decisions, it can be easy to overlook what is happening in other courts and in federal agencies. It’s not just the current high court that’s trying to repeal the civil rights era’s legacy of social progress. States attorneys general, governors and other bad actors are hard at work attacking our civil rights.

In my home state of Louisiana, Attorney General Jeff Landry took it upon himself to sue the EPA, the Department of Justice, and the administration for overstepping their legal and constitutional bounds. Their alleged transgressions? Following up on complaints that toxic industries in the state were polluting communities of color — and state agencies were doing nothing to stop them.

For almost two years, the federal government has been trying to coordinate efforts to respond to complaints from people and communities in the Deep South who have been made victims by the petrochemical industry. The state, absent federal intervention, has done little to protect its own residents.

Between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, the banks of the Mississippi River are littered with refineries and petrochemical plants, and the surrounding communities have the scars to prove it. Cancer rates are so high along this industrial corridor, it’s come to be known as “Cancer Alley.” In this area – and in others in Louisiana and Texas – plants are sited within majority Black communities, and even in residential areas. The negative health impacts, especially cancer, are disproportionately shouldered by Black residents.

Let’s be clear about one critical fact here: under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Americans have the right to file complaints with federal agencies for alleged acts of racial discrimination. Such complaints are fielded by the Department of Education when the case arises from discrimination in schools, or by the Department of Transportation, if, for example, a local authority is attempting to segregate a community using a highway or railroad, something that used to happen routinely in the South.

In the case of petrochemical pollution in Louisiana, the EPA and the federal government writ large not only had the right but the responsibility to investigate citizen’s claims of discrimination. Citizens, universities and nonprofit organizations have shown that local authorities have planned to pack Black neighborhoods with toxic plants, and that the state has permitted them to do so. If poisoning predominantly Black communities with toxic emissions and industrial waste isn’t an act of racial discrimination, then what is?

Unfortunately, it seems the federal government has decided to give in to pressure, dropping three of its highest-profile civil rights complaints. Of course, this doesn’t just mean stepping away from negotiations that could have changed permitting processes and improved the lives of local residents. It also signals a willingness to back away from the broader investigation into industry, state, and local authorities packing toxic pollutants into Black communities along the Gulf Coast.

There’s still another case, also from Cancer Alley, that focuses on local authorities zoning Black communities for new petrochemical facilities. Fortunately in that case, the plaintiffs have volumes of evidence, from the parish’s history of discriminatory land use practices to a more recent paper trail that could be seen as a smoking gun. Within the last 10 years, the parish has zoned only two precincts for polluting industry, both being majority Black.

Environmental injustice is one of the most insidious and life-threatening forms of discrimination we face in this country. From poisoned water in Flint, Mich., to coal pollution in the Southwest’s indigenous communities, to carcinogens from petrochemical plants in Black communities on the Gulf, environmental injustice is costing lives.

Today, we have politicians like Landry dedicated to closing what few avenues of recourse remain for injured citizens. At the same time, we have “jurists” passing anti-civil rights legislation from the bench. We need to make sure this administration continues to fight for civil rights and put an end to environmental injustice.

Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Ret.) led Joint Task Force Katrina in New Orleans following the devastating Category 5 hurricane. He is currently head of The Green Army, an organization dedicated to finding solutions to pollution.