Environmental Justice and Civil Rights advocates respond to Title VI attack from state Attorneys General 

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. —   Communities, advocates, and environmental groups working across the nation to advance environmental justice and civil rights are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to reject the Anti-Civil Rights Petition a group of 23 attorneys general filed in April.  

In a response sent to the EPA on September 4, advocates outlined that for EPA to fulfill its mission to protect human health and the environment, and ensure that all communities benefit from that protection, “EPA must do more—not less” to ensure that recipients of federal funding comply with  Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.  

In their April petition, attorneys general from mainly Southern and Midwestern states with poor civil rights and environmental records petitioned EPA to stop including disparate impact in its analysis, effectively asking the agency to ignore whether public programs disproportionately harm or exclude communities of color. 

In today’s letter, environmental justice and civil rights organizations call on EPA to reject the Anti-Civil Rights Petition, maintain the agency’s disparate impact regulations, and enforce our civil rights and environmental laws with more rigor. 

The letter outlines stories of frontline communities of color facing disproportionate environmental pollution burdens and comes two weeks after a federal judge in Louisiana permanently blocked the EPA and Department of Justice from enforcing disparate impact regulations under Title VI in that state.  

“In this critical moment of the climate crisis, we must protect our most vulnerable communities with every resource available and Title VI has been a powerful shield for every community seeking environmental justice. These attempts to weaken the Civil Rights Act, when we should be celebrating and codifying the impact it has made on this country in the last 60 years, are a show of cowardice and fear,” said KeShaun Pearson, president of Memphis Community Against Pollution (MCAP).

MCAP is referenced in the response letter because on May 16, 2021, it filed a Title VI complaint against the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation for violations of Title VI in its issuance of permits, including for the Byhalia Connection Pipeline, a proposed 49-mile pipeline that would have gone through predominantly Black neighborhoods in southwest Memphis. MCAP and communities in Memphis have since defeated the pipeline but are still threatened by environmental injustices, and the complaint remains pending.   

In September 2021, the Duplin County Branch of the North Carolina NAACP and the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign filed a Title VI complaint against the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality saying that DEQ issued permits to four industrial hog operations that lack the necessary air and water pollution protections in violation of Title VI. This complaint is still pending and mentioned in the letter.  

“Issues like hog operations and climate-changing emissions from polluting utilities are not going away. The reality is that corporate greed and companies and agencies intentionally taking the path of least of resistance are still things that communities of color and poor, rural communities still deal with and will continue to deal with until there is some acknowledgement that efforts like this one by the attorneys general coupled with the climate crisis serve as multipliers on deep seated inequity,” said William Barber III, William Barber III with the North Carolina Poor People’s Campaign.  

Dr. Treva Gear, founder and chair of Concerned Citizens of Cook County, continues to advocate for communities in Georgia, where her organization filed a Title VI Complaint against the Environmental Protection Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources in 2023. The complaint alleges that EPD’s air quality program does not protect the most vulnerable Georgians because EPD failed to identify vulnerable communities or analyze their unique health and welfare needs as a part of its permitting program. 

“This work that advocates across the nation are doing is pivotal and Title VI is a tool that we’ve used time and time again. It’s been effective. The attorneys generals that we pay with our tax dollars attempting to roll back our civil rights to clean air and water is unconscionable. These types of attempts to weaken the law make it seem like we’re fighting an unending battle, but we will continue to protect communities ,” she said. 

Chandra Taylor-Sawyer is leader of SELC’s Environmental Justice Initiative and has seen how important these protections under Title VI are for communities fighting environmental injustice. 

“The continued actions of some public officials to downplay the harm racist systems and environmental practices have had on BIPOC communities across the nation is intolerable.  Rollbacks like the one the attorneys general’s petition suggests will continue the practice of failing to protect or recklessly harming these communities,” she said. “Now is not the time to go backward on this.”