Residents See Fifth Circuit Case as Crucial for ‘Cancer Alley’

Louisiana residents living near a petrochemical corridor known as “Cancer Alley” are confronting local officials in court on Monday in a case they hope will go further in cleaning up their community than hamstrung federal enforcement efforts.

Local advocacy groups Inclusive Louisiana, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, and RISE St. James will give oral arguments at the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in a complaint over a lower court decision to dismiss plaintiffs’ claims stemming from alleged environmental racism.

The groups and their members want a moratorium from courts that would halt two new facilities from being built in the area, as well as the expansion of existing operations.

The 85-mile Cancer Alley corridor along the Mississippi River is lined with hundreds of petrochemical, manufacturing, and refinery facilities—including operations run by Denka Performance Elastomer LLC and Formosa Plastics. St. James Parish local officials zoned the land in 2014 to make it easier for facilities to set up shop.

The groups claim that St. James Parish officials made discriminatory land use decisions that have intentionally put heavily polluting industry in Black neighborhoods and threatened unmarked graves of people who were formerly enslaved.

“This pattern and practice, rooted in slavery and its afterlife, has transformed Plaintiffs’ communities into industrial sacrifice zones,” according to the complaint.

Federal Limitations

The case is all the more important, since federal powers “have been rendered helpless and relegated to the sidelines” under a recent court decision that rolls back civil rights protections, according to Sadaf Doost, Bertha Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the plaintiffs alongside the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic.

Judge James D. Cain Jr. of the US Court of Appeals for the Western District of Louisiana issued a permanent injunction in August that prevents the Environmental Protection Agency from considering “disparate impacts” in Title VI matters within the state of Louisiana.

The Louisiana district court stripped the federal government of the ability to consider indirect impacts to discrimination within civil rights investigations.

The decision was another blow to communities and advocates, especially after the agency closed a major investigation into Cancer Alley in July 2023.

“This case is all the more important now because it is left to those most affected to fight for their rights in cases like this,” Doost said.

The EPA is also trying to defend its regulations aimed at cancer-causing chemicals for the Denka neoprene plant located along the corridor. After unsuccessfully petitioning for a stay of the rule, Denka was granted a two-year extension on compliance from Louisiana while it continues to fight the standards in court.

“The current administration in Louisiana is waging war on federal agencies, when they finally endeavor to live up to their mission and try to protect minority communities who have been under siege for generations,” Doost said in an email.

‘Beyond a Legal Battle’

The Parish insists that Cain was right to find the plaintiffs lacked standing, and it argues appellants can’t prove there was any intentional discrimination in the Parish’s land use policies.

The complaint “reads more like a narrative history of the State of Louisiana than a lawsuit,” according to the Parish’s opening brief. “Following the historical review spanning hundreds of years, the Complaint attempts to cobble together causes of action from a tangled web of irrelevant facts.”

The Parish did not return a request for comment on the case.

For advocates and community members like Sharon C. Lavigne, founder & director of RISE St. James, this appeal “goes beyond a legal battle.”

“The outcome of this ruling is not just crucial for St. James Parish, but for all frontline communities across the nation who demand to be seen, heard, and protected,” Lavigne said in a statement to Bloomberg Law. “Weeping may endure for a night, but justice will come in the morning.”

Pamela Spees of the Center for Constitutional Rights and student attorney Jack Dean of the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic are arguing on behalf of the appellants. Danielle Borel and Carroll Devillier Jr. of Breazeale, Sachse & Wilson LLP will argue on behalf of St. James Parish.

Judges Patrick E. Higginbotham, Carl E. Stewart, and Catharina Haynes are on the panel.

The case is Inclusive La. v. St. James Parish, 5th Cir., No. 23-30908, oral arguments scheduled 10/7/24.