Republican AGs attack Biden’s EPA for pursuing environmental discrimination cases

ST. LOUIS (AP) — Republican attorneys general attacked the Biden administration’s stated goal of pursuing environmental justice, calling it a form of “racial engineering.‘’

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody and 22 other GOP officials asked the EPA Tuesday to stop using civil rights laws to investigate actions and policies that result in harm to Black people or other minority groups — even unintentionally — more than white residents.

“The EPA should be focusing on enforcing the environmental laws passed by Congress, not so called ‘environmental justice,’ which is a euphemism for Biden’s extreme agenda,‘’ Moody said. Their petition demands that the EPA change decades-old rules, though the civil rights law could still be used where discrimination was intentional.

The petition is unlikely to convince the Biden administration to back away from an issue EPA Administrator Michael Regan has taken pains to highlight. Regan, for example, went on a “Journey to Justice” tour to places like the industrial stretch of Louisiana typically called Cancer Alley to show how majority-Black communities living near polluters were being hurt. To address such harms, the EPA has turned in part to a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 called Title VI to open investigations and pressure states to make changes.

The petition in an election year is the latest in Republicans’ expanding fight against federal policies aimed at addressing historic racial discrimination and they believe courts are on their side. They cited the recent Supreme Court decision that eliminated affirmative action in college admissions, arguing it shows the court is wary of race-conscious federal policies.