Courts dismissed racial motivation in toxic siting despite strong circumstantial evidence

Evidence

An unsympathetic judge, W. Earl Britt, removed the last legal hurdle between Afton and the PCB dumping when he ruled against the residents, declaring from his bench, “There is not one shred of evidence that race has at any time been a motivating factor for any decision taken by any official, state, federal or local.” — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1202

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 1202
• XREF: connects to: US law requires proof of racist intent, not just disparate impact, to win — Harriet A. Washington, A Terrible Thing to Waste, 470; Courts reject impact-based environmental racism claims absent proven intentional discrimination — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 327