EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice
Pursuant to a permanent injunction issued by the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana on August 22, 2024, EPA will not impose or enforce any disparate-impact or cumulative-impact-analysis requirements under Title VI against any entity in the State of Louisiana. Click here for additional and updated information.
View Publication: EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (pdf)
Overview
EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (EJ Legal Tools) is an updated and expanded compilation of legal authorities available to EPA for identifying and addressing the disproportionate impact of pollution on underserved and overburdened communities, including communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities. EJ Legal Tools is intended to help EPA decisionmakers and partners understand their authorities to consider and address environmental justice and equity in decision-making, and to promote meaningful engagement. EPA Legal Tools builds on an earlier version, Plan EJ 2014: Legal Tools, which was released in 2011.
EJ Legal Tools highlights the environmental and civil rights statutes EPA implements to achieve the agency’s mission to protect human health and the environment for all communities and persons and to ensure that the environmental justice and equity agendas are integrated throughout the agency’s policies, programs, and activities.
EJ Legal Tools is not intended to be comprehensive and will be updated as needed. The document does not provide action-specific legal advice and is intended to foster a dialogue among EPA offices and programs to accelerate EPA efforts to advance environmental justice and equity.
Cumulative Impacts Addendum Final 2023-01-08 (pdf)
The Cumulative Impacts Addendum builds on EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice (EJ Legal Tools), which was released in May 2022. The Addendum is a compilation of legal authorities available to EPA for identifying and addressing cumulative impacts on communities with environmental justice concerns and other underserved populations, including communities of color, Indigenous peoples, and low-income communities.
In communities with environmental justice concerns, the combined exposures to a broad range of stressors (i.e., cumulative impacts) may often increase their vulnerability to environmental hazards, resulting in disproportionate environmental and public health harms and risks in those communities. Addressing cumulative impacts is an important tool to help protect public health in communities with environmental justice concerns and other underserved populations.
A product of the EPA’s Office of General Counsel, the Addendum identifies for EPA decisionmakers and partners a wide range of authorities that can be deployed to address cumulative impacts affecting communities with environmental justice concerns and provides some illustrative examples. The Addendum is not intended to be comprehensive and will be updated as needed. It does not provide action-specific legal advice and is intended to foster a dialogue among EPA offices and programs to accelerate EPA efforts to advance environmental justice and equity.
EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice: Executive Order 14096 Addendum (pdf)
EO 14096, “Revitalizing Our Nation's Commitment to Environmental Justice for All” (88 FR 25251, Apr. 21, 2023), directs each agency to make achieving environmental justice part of its mission. In June 2024, OGC finalized the EPA Legal Tools to Advance Environmental Justice: Executive Order 14096 Addendum (EO 14096 Addendum), which highlights important new elements of EO 14096, explores the agency directives and EPA-specific directives included in the EO, provides tools for practitioners to implement the EO, and discusses the relationship between the EO and the conclusions drawn in EJ Legal Tools and the Cumulative Impacts Addendum.
While EO 14096 broadens and deepens environmental justice considerations and the federal government’s commitment to environmental justice, it remains consistent with prior environmental justice EOs in its focus on the protection of human health and the environment for all. Because the authorities to address environmental justice identified in EJ Legal Tools and the Cumulative Impacts Addendum are based on the agency’s statutory and regulatory authority to consider human health and the environment, the conclusions in those two documents are not changed by EO 14096, and they remain useful resources for identifying the agency’s legal authorities to advance environmental justice.