Trump scraps Clinton-era environmental justice order

By Sean Reilly | 01/22/2025 04:45 PM EST

The 1994 executive order was considered a launching pad for federal efforts to overcome long-standing environmental discrimination.

Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the Democratic National Convention.

Former President Bill Clinton speaks during the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago. In 1994, Clinton signed an executive order considered the launching pad for federal environmental justice efforts. Paul Sancya/AP

The Trump administration has erased a decades-old requirement for federal agencies to consider the environmental and public health consequences of their decisions on people of color and low-income communities.

As part of a newly issued executive order, Trump revoked former President Bill Clinton’s 1994 directive that’s often seen as a milestone in federal efforts to overcome the effects of long-standing discrimination that has left disadvantaged populations disproportionately exposed to dangerous pollution.

Officially known as Executive Order 12898, it required agencies to incorporate environmental justice into their missions “to the greatest extent practicable.” Among other mandates, the Clinton-era order entailed consistent enforcement of all health and environmental statutes, along with improved research of the well-being of “minority and low-income populations.”

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At EPA, for example, major new Clean Air Act rules are routinely accompanied by an analysis of the potential consequences for disadvantaged populations. Those analyses cite the Clinton-era order as their basis, raising the question of whether EPA will now continue to perform them.

The implications for reviews of federally funded highway projects — once notorious for being routed through already struggling neighborhoods — were also not immediately clear. The first sentence of the Transportation Department’s current environmental justice strategy highlights Executive Order 12898.

The Trump administration’s decision to scrap the Clinton order was packaged with revocations of other policies aimed at fostering more equitable treatment across racial and economic lines. Since passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the White House says those policies are now having the opposite effect.

The federal government, corporations and other institutions “have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ … that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the new order says.

Dated Tuesday, it follows an earlier edict that rescinded Biden administration policies that sought to build on Executive Order 12898.

Environmental justice advocates decried those measures and vowed to keep fighting.

Coupled with other Trump administration rollbacks, “these actions also place vulnerable communities in even greater danger from pollution and the dire, real-time consequences of the climate crisis,” Leslie Fields, chief federal officer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, said in a statement.

“In the face of these assaults, we will not stop pursuing justice,” Fields said.

A spokesperson for the New York-based group had no immediate comment Wednesday on the revocation of Executive Order 12898; several other environmental justice advocates also could not be reached.

Reporter Tim Cama contributed.