A broad coalition of advocacy groups urged EPA this week to summarily reject a petition by Republican state attorneys general seeking to scrap civil rights safeguards for communities burdened by the “disparate impact” of pollution.
The AGs “simply — and cruelly — ignore the lived experience of frontline communities facing disproportionate environmental exposures,” some 50 groups and individuals said in their Wednesday letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan and General Counsel Jeffrey Prieto. Signers ranged from national organizations like the NAACP and Earthjustice to Inclusive Louisiana and local groups.
The letter takes aim at the April petition brought by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and 22 GOP colleagues that asks EPA to scrap a provision barring states from taking steps that “have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, national origin or sex” under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
In practice, they wrote, that prohibition means asking states “to engage in racial engineering” when making permitting decisions “rather than relying on the effect on the environment and other appropriate factors.”
