A federal district court judge will decide whether a civil rights lawsuit seeking to pause the approval of new industrial facilities within St. James Parish’s two majority Black council districts can continue, following a Wednesday (Jan. 28) court hearing on the parish’s motion for dismissal.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2023 by St. James community groups, a church and residents, argued the parish’s land use policies have discriminated on the basis of race for more than 50 years. The residents, who live in two majority-Black council districts, allege the parish’s history of approving polluting chemical plants in their districts results in ongoing harm to their health, property and cemeteries.
“We’re talking about a long-standing system of discrimination that has guided a whole host of decisions and the impact is that it has risked our clients’ lives,” said Center for Constitutional Rights attorney Astha Sharma Pokharel, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, in federal court in New Orleans on Wednesday.
Since the first plant was built in St. James in 1958, all but four of the parish’s 32 petrochemical plants are located in the parish’s 4th and 5th Districts, both of them majority Black. In the 4th District, the Black population declined from 61% to 52% from 2010 to 2020, according to the U.S. Census. The 5th District remains overwhelmingly Black at 89%, as of 2020.
Attorneys representing St. James Parish argue that the plants were sited in areas where the population was declining without consideration of race. On Wednesday, they said that the parish’s land use plan intended to encourage residential development in certain areas of the parish while reserving space for job creation through industrial development in others.
“They couldn’t protect everyone, or there would be no industry,” said Danielle Borel, one of the attorneys representing the parish, parish council and the local planning commission, in Wednesday’s hearing.
Borel told U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier, who is presiding over the case, that there wasn’t enough evidence that the parish had intentionally made any decisions based on race, and there was a rational basis for the components of the land use plan aside from race.
Barbier said it was unlikely a councilmember would state outright that they plan “to intentionally harm” the Black residents of the 4th and 5th Districts. When he asked Borel what else she believed would satisfy proof of intent, Borel said she would have to “stretch her imagination.” She said race or a person’s appearance would need to be discussed as part of a proposal by a public official. If not, the evidence could only show that one racial group was being disparately harmed — which isn’t enough to be considered a violation of civil rights, she argued.
“There will always be someone unhappy. That alone is not enough to pursue this,” Borel said.
The plaintiffs, however, argued they had some evidence of intent, including a past iteration of the parish’s land use plan from 2014 that carved out “buffer zones” around certain tourist plantations, schools and Catholic churches. Most of the zones were concentrated in the majority white area of the parish, leaving out Baptist churches and schools that primarily served Black areas of the parish. Pokharel also said that at times, council members have voiced when decisions look racially discriminatory to them in public meetings.
The federal Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals also already found the lawsuit had provided allegations of unequal treatment and intentional discrimination, overturning Barbier’s 2023 decision to dismiss the case.
“This level of systematic discrimination, steering every single facility into the majority Black parts of the parish, is obviously enough to show discriminatory treatment or effect. But it also, knowing full well the impact that it has on majority Black residents — is more than enough to raise a reasonable influence of discriminatory intent,” Pokharel said.
Gail LeBoeuf, co-founder of Inclusive Louisiana, said the judge only needs to look at a map to see evidence of discrimination, noting that one of the parish’s majority-white districts had a significant amount of land along the river to develop for industrial use.
After the oral arguments, Barbier said he would try to release his decision as soon as possible. If he upholds all or a portion of the lawsuit, the case will move into discovery.
The St. James residents who signed onto the complaint said they felt optimistic after the hearing, despite Barbier’s 2023 ruling.
Sharon Lavigne, founder of Rise St. James, said she had faith in their cause and felt they appealed to the judge’s humanity.
“I woke up this morning with God on my side, and he told me we are going to be victorious,” said Lavigne.