EPA has been permanently blocked from enforcement of a key civil rights tenet in Louisiana, further imperiling the Biden administration’s push to lessen pollution’s inequitable impacts on people of color in the state.
In a permanent injunction issued late Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Cain Jr. of the Western District of Louisiana said EPA can no longer enforce “disparate-impact requirements” under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act against any entities in the state or require compliance with those requirements as a condition of federal financial assistance.
Louisiana’s Constitution bans racial discrimination while state law similarly “bars discrimination by virtually all businesses and other federal grant recipients,” Cain wrote.
His ruling, which EPA can appeal, was expected after Cain in January agreed to a preliminary injunction in the Louisiana attorney general’s bid to halt future inquiries into the inequitable effects of state permitting decisions in areas like the Mississippi River industrial corridor often dubbed “Cancer Alley.”
