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CRPE's CAMPAIGNS
Civil Rights:
Fighting for Racial Justice
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| Luke Cole at a press conference announcing a civil rights compaint in Hunters Point, San Francisco |
CRPE has pioneered the use of civil rights law in environmental
justice disputes, producing guides for grassroots activists, coordinating
pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce its
own civil rights regulations, and representing client groups across
the United States in civil rights complaints and lawsuits. CRPE’s
civil rights advocacy began in 1991, when it filed a civil rights
and environmental law suit against Kings County, California for
permitting a toxic waste incinerator near Kettleman City. CRPE’s
clients won that suit on environmental grounds.
CRPE is co-counsel in the historic civil rights case South Camden
Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, in which a District Court judge held – for
the first time in U.S. history – that an environmental agency’s
permitting decision, although legal under environmental law, was
a violation of civil rights law. Although the decision was overturned on appeal,
it stands as a monument to the potential civil rights law could
have given courts not hostile to civil rights plaintiffs.
CRPE has represented dozens of community
groups who have used administrative complaints to federal agencies
under civil rights regulations to
challenge a variety of environmental hazards, from toxic waste
dumps (Kettleman City, Buttonwillow and Westmorland, California)
to garbage dumps (numerous towns in rural Alabama) to chemical
weapons disposal plants (Dayton, Ohio) to diesel bus terminals
(Harlem, New York) to nuclear waste dumps (Colorado River Indian
Tribes, California and Arizona). CRPE has worked with these client
communities to ensure that the civil rights complaints were deployed
as part of an ongoing community campaign, to raise the profile
of the groups involved and draw new adherents to local struggles.
A partial list of CRPE’s civil rights clients is here. CRPE has also coordinated the national
effort to get the EPA to enforce its own civil rights regulations
under Title VI of the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, including writing comments on EPA’s
various Title VI Guidances: in 2000, CRPE submitted comments
on behalf of more than 125 community groups, environmental justice
organizations, coalitions, networks, Indian Nations and individuals,
from 33 states and Puerto Rico. CRPE also served on the EPA’s
Title VI Implementation Committee, which advised EPA on how
to enforce civil rights laws.
CRPE’s advocacy around EPA’s civil rights record has
also included a scholarly analysis of EPA’s civil rights
record (“Civil Rights, Environmental Justice and the EPA:
The Brief History of Administrative Complaints Under Title VI,” 9
Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation 309 (1994))
as well as a detailed critique of EPA’s first civil rights
decision on the merits (“‘Wrong on the Facts, Wrong
on the Law’:
Civil Rights Advocates Excoriate EPA’s Most Recent Title
VI Misstep,” 29 ELR News & Analysis 10775 (1999)).
CRPE has published numerous
articles and book chapters on using civil rights law in the environmental
justice context, including works that are instructional (such as “Community-Based
Administrative Advocacy under Civil Rights Law: A Potential Environmental
Justice Tool for Legal Services Advocates,” 29 Clearinghouse
Review 360 (1995) and “Environmental Justice Litigation:
Another Stone in David's Sling,” 21 Fordham Urban Law
Journal 523 (1994).) as well as descriptive and analytical (for example, “Using
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to Protect Cultural and Natural
Resources,” a chapter in Natural Resources and Environmental
Justice (K. Mutz, G. Bryner, D. Kenney eds.)(Island Press, 2002))
and prescriptive (“Stop Gutting Civil Rights,” 17 The
Environmental Forum 50 (September-October 2000)).
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