Judge blocks Biden EPA from applying race-based metrics to fight air pollution

A federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cannot require Louisiana to use race-based metrics to evaluate permitting decisions, writing that “pollution does not discriminate.”

Louisiana objected in its May 2023 lawsuit to the EPA's insistence that the state conduct a “disparate impact” analysis on a Clean Air Act permit, arguing that officials lost sight of the agency's mission and “decided instead to moonlight as a race-fixated social justice warrior.” the judge agreed that the disparate impact analysis mandated by the EPA under Title VI “creates a decision based on race.”

“Where an action would have a disparate impact, a decision maker is often forced to act intentionally on the basis of racial considerations to avoid the disparate impact … therefore, disparate impact regulations require those responsible for taking decisions “to assess the racial outcomes of their policies, and to make decisions based on (because of) those racial outcomes,'” wrote U.S. District Court Judge James Cain, Jr., a Trump appointee.

Cain issued a court order temporarily blocking the EPA and the Department of Justice (DOJ) from using Title VI to enforce disparate impact requirements unless ratified by the president and based on the regulations of 'disparate impact of the EPA.

“The public interest here is that government agencies obey their laws and treat all their citizens equally, without regard to race,” the judge wrote. “By the way, if a decision-maker has to consider race, to decide, he has in fact participated in racism.”

It found that complying with the analysis would impose significant costs on Louisiana, in addition to creating concern for other states.

“It is abundantly clear that the repeated actions of the defendants here have created great cause for concern, not only for the state of Louisiana, but also for our sister states that have also found themselves at the whim of the EPA and their exaggerated mandates”, he added. wrote the judge.

The EPA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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