Real Stories: South Camden Citizens in Action v. NJ Department of Environmental Protection
South Camden Citizens in Action
South Camden Citizens in Action v. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection
New Jersey
By the late 1990s, South Camden, an impoverished and largely minority community, already hosted the region's largest trash incinerator, a power plant, the county sewage treatment plant, a radioactive waste site and one of the nation’s highest cancer rates.
After the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued a license to operate for a new cement plant in South Camden, a group of South Camden residents, the South Camden Citizens in Action, decided they’d had enough.
The residents brought their case to federal court, seeking to stop the opening of the new cement plant on the grounds that it unfairly discriminated against South Camden’s residents based on their race.
On April 19, 2001, a federal district court judge suspended the cement plant’s license, citing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits states from using federal funds to discriminate based on race or national origin. Unfortunately, less than one week later, the Supreme Court ruled in Alexander v. Sandoval that individuals must provide proof of discriminatory intent in order to sue states under Title VI for race discrimination in federally funded programs.
Because the South Camden Citizens in Action didn’t have the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on record that they intended to put the plant in South Camden to discriminate based on race, the federal district court judge was forced to throw out the case.
The community remains under environmental assault, while its affluent and majority white surrounding communities lack environmental hazards like cement plants.
