DOJ Touts Broad Range of Environmental Justice Courtroom Wins

The Justice Department’s new environmental justice team spent its first year busily bringing cases, forging settlements, and building a national infrastructure of environmental justice-focused prosecutors, according to the group’s first-ever annual report.

The Office of Environmental Justice was unveiled in May 2022, along with a comprehensive enforcement strategy intended to reach a key Biden administration goal of protecting historically underserved communities.

DOJ has taken a wide range of actions since then, such as reaching an agreement in the Civil Rights division’s first ever environmental justice investigation under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act over whether Alabama’s Department of Public Health discriminated against Black residents in operating its wastewater disposal program; settling with the City of Houston over illegal dumping in Black and Latino neighborhoods; and negotiating an interim order with Jackson, Miss., to stabilize its drinking water system.

Each of the 94 US Attorneys’ offices has also appointed at least one civil or criminal prosecutor to serve as an environmental justice coordinator, according to the report released Oct. 13. Among those offices, 91 have created environmental justice community reporting systems to make it easier for community members to report their concerns.

Other parts of the department’s work includes finding ways to start, restart, or expand district-level environmental crimes task forces, and reaching out to agencies with regulatory, enforcement, cleanup, or restoration authorities, such as the Environmental Protection Agency and departments of Agriculture, Energy, Transportation, Homeland Security, and Housing and Urban Development.

Going forward, the unit will consider revising its strategy, such as finding ways to make sure DOJ’s involvement with climate litigation in which the department isn’t a party pairs up with its environmental justice goals, reaching out to community members who don’t have Internet access, and offering more training for federal and state employees about the implications of not enforcing laws.

“Communities of color, indigenous communities, and low-income communities too often feel the greatest effects of pollution and climate change,” Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of DOJ’s environmental and natural resources division said in a statement. “We recognize that, and we’re committed to addressing the outsized impacts felt by such communities throughout the United States.”