Environmentalists assumed pollution laws would help the poor but never verified it
Evidence
Both government agencies and the mainstream environmental groups simply assumed during the 1970s and much of the 1980s that the modern environmental laws were addressing the public-health-related concerns of low-income communities and communities of color. Indeed, to the extent that sources of industrial pollution might be disproportionately located where the poor and racial minorities lived, as many of those communities claimed, governmental officials and environmentalists believed that environmental laws were likely only to be socially progressive in their positive impact. There was certainly no reason to suspect that the implementation of such laws might perversely leave those communities in worse circumstances. — Richard J. Lazarus, The Making of Environmental Law, 613
Categorization
- XREF: Example of law’s unintended consequences — ties to Eco-Justice framing of environmental law structurally failing the vulnerable. — connects to: Legal remedies consistently fail to aid communities in environmental justice struggles; Mainstream environmental groups legitimize pollution by litigating marginal measures