Environmental justice activists and advocates argue that your race and socioeconomic status should not dictate the environmental health risks you face. The environmental justice movement is aimed at avoiding, minimizing, or mitigating disproportionately high and adverse human health and environmental impacts, including social and economic impacts, on minority and/or low-income communities, and for ensuring disadvantaged communities are engaged meaningfully in the environmental decisionmaking processes.
The 3rd edition of Environmental Justice: Legal Theory and Practice provides an overview of this environmental and public health problem and explores the growth of the environmental justice movement. It analyzes the complex mixture of environmental laws and civil rights legal theories adopted in environmental justice litigation. This new edition examines: updates on toxic tort environmental justice litigation; the relationship of zoning and land use decisions to environmental injustices; the major changes to EPA's Title VI administrative complaint, investigation, and resolution processes; and the quest by U.S. citizens for a human right to a clean and healthy environment in an international forum as well as in state supreme courts.