Ironically, the Buttonwillow legal strategy was sparked by a white farmer.

Evidence

Title VI, the federal law that bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin by agencies that receive federal financial assistance, had been used by civil rights groups for years, but rarely in the environmental justice context. Cole was excited about its possibilities after major media attention to a similar complaint filed in Louisiana. Under the direction of cocounsel Anne Simon, students at the Environmental Law Community Clinic in Berkeley succeeded in tracking federal money from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to DTSC, and from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to Kern County; the complaint was thus filed with those two federal agencies. The complaint alleged that the County, the State, and Laidlaw had taken actions that had the effect of discriminating against Latino residents of Buttonwillow, who were being forced to bear the impact of the dump. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 459

Categorization

• DEFINE: Grounds what Title VI and the ‘effect’ vs ‘intent’ standard mean concretely in the EJ context—central to the book’s role as bridge text between Eco-Justice and Legal Systems.