Environmental Justice Lookahead: Rollback of Environmental Justice at the Federal Level is Here

Environmental Justice (EJ) continued to be a cornerstone of the Biden administration in 2024, seeing the administration award nearly $2 billion in EJ and climate justice related funds to communities and award nearly $69 billion in funds towards environmental efforts in general. Additional EJ developments at the Federal level in 2024 included:

• Establishment of Technical Assistance Centers to provide assistance in developing and funding EJ projects.
• The repeated legal setbacks in the United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) use of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to advance the Biden administration’s EJ agenda.
• The unveiling of the Environmental Justice Clearinghouse, a repository of EJ-related resources.
• Release of EJScreen Version 2.3, which included new environmental indicators, new map layers, and demographics data.
• U.S. EPA published the draft Interim Framework for Advancing Consideration of Cumulative Impacts.
• Release of Version 2.0 of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool (CEJST)
• Development of pilot indicators of Environmental Health Disparities including Blood Lead Levels, Age-adjusted hypertension, population in counties meeting the PM₅ National Ambient Air Quality Standards, Adverse Birth Outcomes, Childhood Asthma Prevalence, and Life Expectancy.

On the state and local front, states continued to develop their own EJ policies, mapping tools, and rulemaking where EJ is an integral part of the permitting process. Some of these included:

• Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) finalizing its rule to require cumulative impact assessments that examine 33 environmental, health, and socioeconomic indicators for existing environmental burden for air quality permitting projects near EJ communities.
• Release of the City of New York’s EJ Mapping Tool (EJNYC), that identifies disadvantaged communities (DAC) within New York City.
• The City of Chicago unveiled the city’s first cumulative impact assessment report that identifies the city’s goals, process, findings, and recommendations.
• Colorado undertaking a rulemaking process to require cumulative impact assessments to advance EJ within the state.
• Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) signing an agreement with U.S. EPA under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to require all hazardous waste permit applicants to perform EJ analyses.

Administration Change and Things to Look for in 2025

Day one of President Trump’s administration saw three executive orders (EO) aimed at rolling back EJ requirements. The first EO, entitled “Initial Rescissions of Harmful Executive Orders and Actions” completely rescinded Biden’s Executive Order 14096, Revitalizing Our Nation’s Commitment to Environmental Justice for All, and EO 14008, Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad. EO 14096 created the White House Office of Environmental Justice that was responsible for coordinating EJ efforts across the federal government. EO 14096 also was paving the way for creating a more unified approach for how federal agencies would consider EJ in their review of permits and other federal actions. EO 14008 established the Justice40 initiative that required 40% of the overall benefits of certain Federal investments be in disadvantaged communities. Trump’s EO revoked both of the Biden EO’s effective immediately.

A second Trump EO, Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Program and Preferencing, results in the following impacts to EJ at the federal level:

• Terminates all EJ offices and positions.
• Requires a list to be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) of agency or department EJ positions and programs in existence on November 4^th, 2024, and an assessment whether these positions or programs have been relabeled to preserve their pre-November 4^th  function.
• Requires a list to be submitted to OMB of all Federal grantees who received federal funding to advance EJ programs, services, or activities since January 20, 2021.
• Directs each deputy agency or department head to assess the operational impact (i.e., cost) of EJ programs and policies.
• Requires that OMB convene a monthly meeting to hear reports from all deputy agency or department heads on the prevalence and the economic and social costs of EJ programs.

In a third Trump EO, Unleashing American Energy, Trump terminated the Green New Deal, the program that was responsible for distributing funds appropriated through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was being used to provide funding to carry out environmental and climate justice activities to benefit underserved and overburdened communities.

With all these day one actions, we can expect federal involvement in EJ related activities to come to a screeching halt. On Tuesday January 21, 2025 the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) directed heads of all U.S. agencies to end diversity programs, and place federal Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) staff on paid leave, effective by 5 pm Wednesday January 22, 2025 and to take down all outward facing media (websites, social media accounts, etc.). The same memo set deadlines of Thursday January 23^rd to compile lists of DEIA offices and employees as of November 5, 2024, and a deadline of a plan for a reduction in force action for employees who work in DEIA offices by January 31, 2025.

Based on the above executive orders, and the OPM memo, at the federal level we can expect:

• The messaging around EJ to significantly decline.
• Support/updates for tools like EJScreen, ECHO Clean Air Tracking Tool (ECATT) tool to be greatly reduced and the potential for these tools to be completely taken off-line.
• CEJEST has already been taken offline.
• Funding for support of EJ-related programs to be withdrawn or cancelled.
• No progress on the cumulative impacts assessment framework.

However, we should continue to see EJ-related requirements for state permitting matters essentially unchanged in states where there is already a process established. One area to watch is around the data availability associated with tools like EJScreen, which many state agencies rely upon for their own analyses supporting EJ and the extent to which the Trump administration attempts to claw back funds awarded under the IRA.

Conclusions

There are lots of developments in the EJ world with things changing literally from moment to moment. While it appears that the federal government will retreat from EJ-related activities for the time being, EJ activities at the state level will continue. ALL4 will continue to follow EJ activity at both the state and federal level and can help you navigate EJ concerns and strategize around appropriate EJ approaches given the regulatory uncertainty. For more information, please contact Joe Sabato.