My legal essay, Flint’s Fight for Environmental Rights, has been published by the Northwestern University Law Review (117 Nw. U. L. Rev. 123 (2022); free download.)
In this essay, I present the Flint Water Crisis as the outcome of both specific state actions and broader failures of environmental law.
The story begins chronologically with the role of the State of Michigan, focusing on state decisions from approximately 2011 to 2015 that culminated in the delivery of drinking water without proper treatment to Flint residents. The injustice of the Flint Water Crisis peaked during the final eighteen months of this period under the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s administration of the Safe Drinking Water Act.
The failure of federal environmental law and governance apparent in the Flint Water Crisis is structural and systemic and a direct cause of ongoing environmental injustices necessitating changes in policy and politics.
There are lessons to be learned from why and how Flint residents were poisoned by their state and failed by the EPA. But the focus of this essay is not how Flint was victimized; it is how Flint has fought back successfully and cleared new legal paths for environmental justice in the courts.
Flint residents have sought accountability for wrongs and vindication of rights in an ongoing five-year legal campaign—and have been overwhelmingly successful. Flint plaintiffs have won orders and opinions from federal courts to require the state to deliver safe water to every Flint resident, to protect due process and equal rights regardless of compliance with environmental laws, to recognize a violation of the right to bodily integrity by the state for providing unsafe water, and to recover damages from the EPA for its negligent administration and enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act. These are tremendous legal victories for advancing meaningful environmental rights in U.S. law, and potential precedents for many other communities suffering from environmental injustice.