A lawsuit alleging that Black residents in a portion of Louisiana have intentionally been subjected to harmful pollution will go forward after a federal court ruled that the case can proceed. At stake is the health and safety of Black communities that date back to the era of slavery, as well as the larger fight against policies and practices that disproportionately expose Black people to dangerous environmental harm.

Federal court rules ‘Cancer Alley’ lawsuit can proceed

As Capital B News reported, a federal judge in New Orleans ruled Feb. 9 that a lawsuit can move forward on behalf of residents of two mostly Black districts in Louisiana’s St. James Parish. The lawsuit alleges that for decades, industrial plants that pollute the environment have been built almost exclusively in these Black communities rather than in white portions of the parish. Plaintiffs argue that building these plants in these areas, some of which are located on the sites where enslaved Black people previously labored on plantations, violates the U.S. Constitution’s 13^th Amendment, which abolished slavery, as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The lawsuit seeks to pause the construction of plants in the two districts.

The statistics behind the lawsuit paint a stark picture. Since 1958, when the first industrial plant was built in the parish, at least 28 of the 32 plants constructed have been built in the two majority-Black districts. By contrast, no plant has been built in a majority-white section of St. James Parish in almost 50 years. The parish is part of a region between New Orleans and Baton Rouge where about 25% of the United States’ petrochemical processing plants are located. This region has been dubbed “Cancer Alley” due to the prevalence of the disease; St. John the Baptist Parish, for example, had the nation’s highest cancer rate in 2014, and the “Cancer Alley” region maintains elevated rates of cancer and respiratory illnesses.

Delays and setbacks in the fight against environmental racism

As Blavity previously reported, the disproportionate health outcomes for St. James Parish’s Black communities and other parts of Cancer Alley have been known for some time. A 2003 study demonstrated a higher death rate from certain types of cancer in the two majority-Black districts in St. James that are being represented in the current lawsuit. Three religious groups representing the area’s Black residents filed their lawsuit in 2023. The lawsuit, a landmark case in the fight against environmental racism, was dismissed by a district court before being revived on appeal.

Federal authorities have delivered little relief for the region. A Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency civil rights investigation was dropped without implementing any major changes. Last year, the Trump administration dropped a lawsuit that had been launched by the Biden administration against a Japanese-owned plant for releasing a carcinogenic chemical into the air in Reserve, Louisiana. Even as residents fight against existing industrial pollution, new concerns arise. For example, four plants are exploring production of “blue ammonia” — a version of the chemical that could capture excess carbon — in Louisiana, despite experts’ concerns that the process would still release significant amounts of carcinogens and other forms of pollution into the local atmosphere.

With these continuing challenges to public health in Cancer Alley, the mostly Black residents of the region continue to face an uphill battle in their fight against environmental racism. For one parish, at least, that fight will continue, with the goal of stopping new sources of industrial contamination from being built in areas of Louisiana that have already been hit hard by decades of pollution.