Black “Cancer Alley” Residents Win Key Ruling in Environmental Racism Case |
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This story was originally published by Capital B.
In a pocket of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley,” Black residents bear the generational toll of “plantation country” becoming “pollution country.”
Seven times as many people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer than the national average in these disproportionately Black communities.
Now, a federal district court has given those residents something they almost never get: a chance to put the whole system on trial.
On Feb. 9, a judge in New Orleans ruled that groups representing residents of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, which stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, can proceed with their landmark lawsuit seeking a pause on toxic industrial plants in two majority‑Black districts in St. James Parish.
The court rejected the parish government’s attempt to throw the case out and allowed every claim to move forward. At the core of these claims are two arguments: The parish’s decades‑old land-use practices violate the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which grants all Americans equal protection under the law.
The case will force a jury to decide whether the disproportionate placing of facilities, whose pollution is tied to cancer cases, asthma, heart and lung diseases, and neurological issues, is a vestige........