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- Title
Disability Environmental Justice: How § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act Can Be Used for Environmental Justice Litigation.
- Authors
Alpert, Joshua M.
- Abstract
One of the largest problems facing environmental justice litigation is the lack of a private right of action for disparate impact discrimination under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This absence of a private right of action has effectively rendered federal anti-discrimination law a dead letter in remedying the inequitable distribution of environmental harms in most cases. However, in light of new scientic and legal developments, this Note proposes a novel litigation strategy to address the environmental harms for which Title VI provides no remedy. Specically, this Note proposes using § 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for future environmental justice litigation. In three parts, this Note discusses the legal and factual developments that pave the way for this litigation. Part I engages in statutory interpretation of § 504 to help answer two questions central to the circuit split between the Sixth and Ninth Circuits. First, does § 504 prohibit disparate impact discrimination? Second, assuming § 504 prohibits disparate impact, does the Rehabilitation Act provide a private right of action to enforce that prohibition? Part II moves from the legal questions to factual questions, examining current disparate impact discrimination research and potential future research conducive to environmental justice litigation. Drawing on the previous two sections, Part III discusses how to bring a disability-centered environmental justice case under § 504, and the potential benets of bringing such a case.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL justice; DISCRIMINATION (Sociology); FEDERAL laws; CIVIL rights; ACTIONS &; defenses (Law)
- Publication
Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 2024, Vol 59, Issue 2, p401
- ISSN
0017-8039
- Publication type
Article