While environmental justice initiatives may have experienced a recent administrative curtailment at the direction of the executive branch,[1] recent litigation trends show that EJ-related issues are far from moot. On Wednesday, April 9, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed the District Court’s dismissal of Appellants’ EJ-related claims regarding racially discriminatory practices in industrial siting and remanded this case to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana for further proceedings.[2]
The Appellants, comprising community and faith-based groups representing residents in St. James Parish,[3] appealed the dismissal of their challenge to the Parish’s[4] land use practices. In sum, Appellants alleged that the Parish caused hazardous industrial developments to be disproportionately sited in majority-Black areas, that these developments threaten health, property values, and desecrate ancestral burial sites, and that the Parish discriminates by protecting white Catholic churches and schools, but not Black Baptist churches.
The District Court dismissed all seven of the claims with prejudice: (I) Thirteenth Amendment claims (badge or incident of slavery); (II) Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection claims; (III) Fourteenth Amendment Substantive Due Process claims; (IV) 42 U.S.C. § 1982 claims (property rights); (V) 42 USC §2000cc Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”) claims (substantial burden on religious rights); (VI) 42 USC §2000cc RLUIPA claims (religious discrimination); and (VII) claims under Article XII Section 4 of the Louisiana Constitution (Preservation of Linguistic and Cultural Origins).
The District Court found some plaintiffs lacked standing and declared most claims time barred. Specifically, the court held that (1) claims I-IV and VI were time barred because they were based on a single incident—the Parish’s adoption of its 2014 Land Use Plan; (2) that claims V and VII were dismissed with prejudice because the Appellants did not allege religious injury standing; (3) that only Inclusive Louisiana had standing to sue for property injuries, and (4) that none of the Appellants had standing to sue for injuries related to unequal treatment.[5] Appellants raised these four issues on appeal.
1. Statute of Limitations (Claims I-IV, VI)
The Court agreed with Appellants that their injuries were related not only to the adoption of the 2014 plan, but also to a pattern of ongoing, recent discriminatory practices. As to claims I-IV, the Court reasoned that the 2022 rejection of a pollution moratorium in Black areas and the simultaneous approval of a solar moratorium in majority-White areas fell plainly within the applicable one-year limitations period.[6] Likewise, the Court reasoned that the Parish’s approvals of (1) a land use permit for a polyurethane manufacturing facility on a former plantation within a mile of the Appellants and a historically majority-Black Baptist Church and (2) a proposal to build a methanol production plant in the Fifth District near Mount Triumph, plainly fell within the time limit applicable to Claim VI. The Court noted that the Parish cited no authority “supporting the proposition that once a municipality’s land use plan is beyond the statute of limitations, any claims arising from that municipality’s individual land use decisions are time barred, regardless of when those decisions were made.”[7] Thus, the Court reversed the dismissal of these claims as time barred.
2. Religious and Cultural Injuries (Claims V and VII)
The Fifth Circuit held Appellants had adequately alleged religious and cultural harms caused by desecration of ancestral burial sites, such that the Appellants had established standing. The Court reasoned that these injuries were fairly traceable to the Parish’s land use decisions, not only private landowners, as the alleged injuries were not only from a lack of physical access to Appellants’ ancestors’ cemeteries, but also from the destruction and desecration traceable to the Parish through its individual land use decisions.[8]
3. Property Injuries
All three plaintiff organizations properly alleged diminished property values of their members’ property due to industrial siting. Although the Appellants could have given more detail on how the Parish’s land use decisions affected their property values, the court still found this was a concrete and traceable injury sufficient for standing, and that the Parish cited no authority to support that “Article III mandates additional specificity to establish traceability.”[9]
4. Stigmatic Harm
Finally, the Court found that Appellants had alleged they were personally subjected to unequal treatment, which supports a stigmatic injury claim under the Equal Protection Clause. Specifically, the Appellants alleged that the Parish’s land use decisions consistently steer hazardous industrial development to predominantly Black districts while shielding predominately White districts from industrial development, which sufficed to show unequal treatment.[10]
Although this decision is a reversal of a pre-trial motion to dismiss and not a final decision on the merits, it is a novel approach to land use moratoriums. Further, this decision will be instructive for future cases on environmental justice and land use policies.
[1] See, e.g., Executive Order “Protecting American Energy from State Overreach” (April 8, 2025)(directing the U.S. attorney general to identify state laws that address climate change, ESG initiatives, environmental justice and carbon emissions, and to take action to block them).
[2] Inclusive Louisiana et al. v. St James Parish et al., No. 23- 30908, (5th Cir. Apr. 9, 2025).
[3] Inclusive Louisiana, Mount Triumph Baptist Church, and RISE St. James (collectively “Appellants”).
[4] St. James Parish, St. James Parish Council, and the St. James Parish Planning Commission (collectively, “Parish”).
[5] Inclusive Louisiana, No. 23- 30908, slip copy at pp. 8-9 (5th Cir. Apr. 9, 2025).
[6] Id. at p. 12.
[7] Id. at p. 16.
[8] Id. at p. 18.
[9] Id. at p. 20-21.
[10] Id. at p. 22.