Federal court reviews civil rights lawsuit alleging environmental racism in a Louisiana parish

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A federal appellate court is reviewing a civil rights lawsuit alleging a south Louisiana parish engaged in racist land-use policies to place polluting industries in majority-Black communities.

The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans heard oral arguments on Monday for a lawsuit filed by community groups claiming St. James Parish "intentionally discriminated against Black residents” by encouraging industrial facilities to be built in areas with predominantly Black populations “while explicitly sparing White residents from the risk of environmental harm.”

The groups, Inclusive Louisiana, Rise St. James and Mt. Triumph Baptist Church, seek a halt to future industrial development in the parish. They say they have suffered health impacts from pollution, diminished property values and violations of religious liberty as a result of the parish's land use system.

The plaintiffs say that 20 of the 24 industrial facilities were in two sections of the parish with majority-Black populations when they filed the complaint in March 2023.

The parish is located along a heavily industrialized stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, known as the Chemical Corridor, often referred to by environmental groups as “Cancer Alley” because of the high levels of suspected cancer-causing pollution emitted there.

The lawsuit comes as the federal government has taken steps during the Biden administration to address the legacy of environmental racism. Federal officials have written stricter environmental protections and committed tens of billions of dollars in funding.

“The decisions made in this courtroom will resonate far beyond our borders, impacting frontline communities nationwide who are yearning for acknowledgment and accountability,” said Shamell Lavigne, a St. James Parish resident and a leader with Rise St. James, a local environmental justice organization. “We are advocating for our future and the wellbeing of our children.”

In November 2023, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana had dismissed the lawsuit against St. James Parish largely on procedural grounds, ruling the plaintiffs had filed their lawsuit too late. But he added, “this Court cannot say that their claims lack a basis in fact or rely on a meritless legal theory.”

Barbier had accepted the parish's argument that the lawsuit hinged on its 2014 land-use plan, which generally shielded white neighborhoods from industrial development and left majority-Black neighborhoods, schools and churches without the same protections. The plan also described largely Black sections of the parish as “future industrial” sites, a classification described by the plaintiffs as a form of “racial cleansing.”

Regardless, the plaintiffs had missed the legal window to sue the parish by not filing their lawsuit within one year after the land-use plan was formalized, as required by statute of limitations laws, the judge had ruled.

During the appeals hearing, Fifth Circuit Court Judge Catharina Haynes said that the argument raised by the parish “basically makes it sound like if you didn’t sue within a year, well, heck, you can be discriminated against in a bunch of different ways for the rest of eternity.”

Carroll Devillier, Jr., a lawyer representing the parish, responded that residents had already had the opportunity to challenge the 2014 land use plan when it was being formulated. He also said the plaintiffs “have nothing” to prove they suffered from harms from discrimination in the year before they filed their lawsuit in March 2023.

Haynes also observed that parish officials, including those representing majority Black areas, had voted to support the 2014 land-use plan. “Why would you vote to discriminate against yourself?” she asked.

Pamela Spees, a lawyer for the Center of Constitutional Rights representing the plaintiffs, said the land-use plan could be approved by government officials but still reinforce discrimination.

After the hearing, Spees said that the approval of the land use plan had to be understood in the context of ongoing structural racism.

At its core, the lawsuit alleges civil rights violations under the 13th and 14th amendments, stating the land-use system in the parish allowing for industrial buildout primarily in majority-Black communities remains shaped by the history of slavery, white supremacy and Jim Crow laws and governance.

The parish's 2014 land use plan is just one piece of evidence among many revealing persistent and ongoing discrimination by the parish, Spees said.

As evidence of more recent alleged discrimination, the lawsuit highlights the parish's decision in August 2022 to impose a moratorium on large solar complexes after a proposed 3,900-acre (1,580-hectare) solar project upset residents of the mostly white neighborhood of Vacherie, who expressed concerns about lowering property values and debris from storms. The parish did not take up a request for a moratorium on heavy industrial expansion raised by the plaintiffs, the lawsuit states.

The parish's lawyer, Devillier, Jr., told judges the solar moratorium had applied to the entire parish and that the plaintiffs' request for a moratorium on industrial expansion, which initially came in the form of a letter sent by the plaintiffs in 2019, was “never formally considered" by the parish.

The lawsuit also argues the parish failed to identify and protect the likely hundreds of burial sites of enslaved people by allowing industrial facilities to build on and limit access to the areas, preventing the descendants of slaves from memorializing the sites. The federal judge tossed out that part of the lawsuit, noting the sites were on private property not owned by the parish.

Lawyers for St. James Parish have said the lawsuit employed overreaching claims and “inflammatory rhetoric." Victor J. Franckiewicz, who has served as special counsel to St. James Parish for land-use matters since 2013, declined to comment after the hearing. St. James Parish did not respond to a request for comment.

“How can a judge rule a statute of limitations on clean air, clean water and clean soil? There should be none,” said Gail LeBoeuf, 72, a life-long St. James resident and a plaintiff in the case who co-founded Inclusive Louisiana.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found in a 2003 report that St. James Parish ranked higher than the national average for certain cancer deaths. Both majority Black sections of the parish are ranked as having a high risk of cancer from toxic pollutants according to an EPA screening tool based on emissions reported by nearby facilities, the complaint noted.

Jack Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Brook on the social platform X: @jack_brook96.

FILE - From left, Myrtle Felton, Sharon Lavigne, Gail LeBoeuf and Rita Cooper, members of RISE St. James, conduct a live stream video on property owned by Formosa in St. James Parish, La., Wednesday, March 11, 2020. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Gail LeBoeuf and Barbara Washington, co-founders of the environmental justice organization Inclusive Louisiana and plaintiffs in a case alleging environmental racism in St. James Parish, Louisiana, speak at a press conference after a hearing for their case at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP/Jack Brook)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A court order that says hospitals cannot federally be required to provide pregnancy terminations when they violate a Texas abortion ban will stay for now, the Supreme Court said Monday.

The decision is another setback for opponents of Texas’ abortion ban, which for two years has withstood multiple legal challenges, including from women who had serious pregnancy complications and have been turned away by doctors.

It left Texas as the only state where the Biden administration is unable to enforce its interpretation of a federal law in an effort to ensure women still have access to emergency abortions when their health or life is at risk.

The justices did not detail their reasoning for keeping in place a lower court order, and there were no publicly noted dissents. Texas had asked the justices to leave the order in place while the Biden administration had asked the justices to throw it out.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called the decision “a major victory.”

The Biden administration argues that a federal law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, requires emergency rooms to provide abortions if a pregnant patient’s health or life is at serious risk, even in states where the procedure is banned. The law only applies to emergency rooms that receive Medicare funding, which most hospitals do.

The Supreme Court decision comes weeks before a presidential election in which Democratic nominee Kamala Harris has put abortion at the center of her campaign, attacking Republican challenger Donald Trump for appointing judges to the high court who overturned nationwide abortion rights in 2022.

“I will never stop fighting for a woman’s right to emergency medical care — and to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade so that women in every state have access to the care they need,” Harris said on social media Monday evening.

Texas' abortion ban has also been a centerpiece of Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred ’s challenge against Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cuz for his seat.

At a campaign event over the weekend in Fort Worth, Texas, hundreds of Allred’s supporters broke out in raucous applause when he vowed to protect a woman’s right to an abortion. “When I’m in the Senate, we’re going to restore Roe v. Wade," Allred said.

At a separate event the same day, in a nearby suburb, Cruz outlined a litany of criticisms against Allred, but didn’t bring up the abortion law.

Katie Glenn Daniel, the state policy director of SBA Pro-Life America, applauded the Supreme Court decision and pointed to data showing Texas doctors have been able to provide an average of about five abortions per month to save a patient's life or health.

Still, complaints of pregnant women in medical distress being turned away from emergency rooms in Texas and elsewhere have spiked as hospitals grapple with whether standard care could violate strict state laws against abortion. Several Texas women have lodged complaints against hospitals for not terminating their failing and dangerous pregnancies because of the state's ban. In some cases, women lost reproductive organs.

In asking the Supreme Court to toss out the lower court decision, the administration pointed to a similar case from Idaho earlier this year in which the justices narrowly allowed emergency abortions to resume while a lawsuit continues. At the time the Idaho case began, the state had an exception for the life, but not the health, of a woman.

Texas said its case is different, however, because the law provides some exceptions if a pregnant patient's health is at risk.

Texas pointed to a state Supreme Court ruling that said doctors do not have to wait until a woman’s life is in immediate danger to provide an abortion legally. Doctors, though, have said the Texas law is dangerously vague, and a medical board has refused to list all the conditions that qualify for an exception.

Marc Hearron, an attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said doctors in Texas got no clarity from the Supreme Court on Monday.

“The health care crisis is ongoing,” Hearron said. “Patients are going to continue to suffer.”

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who has written extensively about abortion, said there remains much uncertainty for doctors in Texas, who could risk life in prison for performing abortions.

“I think we’re going to continue to see physicians turning away patients, even patients who could qualify under the state’s exceptions, because the consequences of guessing wrong are so severe and the laws are not that clear,” Ziegler said.

The Texas case started after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, leading to abortion restrictions in many Republican-controlled states. The Biden administration issued guidance saying hospitals still needed to provide abortions in emergency situations under a health care law that requires most hospitals to treat any patients in medical distress.

Texas sued over that guidance, arguing that hospitals cannot be required to provide abortions that would violate its ban. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, ruling in January that the administration had overstepped its authority.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in a post on X, “Reproductive rights are under assault in this country and women’s health and lives remain in danger from the chaos and confusion caused by overturning Roe.”

Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas. AP reporters Amanda Seitz in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Aamer Madhani in Washington also contributed to this report.

Supreme Court lets stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas ban

Supreme Court lets stand a decision barring emergency abortions that violate Texas ban

FILE - The Supreme Court building is seen, June 28, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)