CPR Scholars Call for 'Vigilant Advocacy' to Protect LGBTQ Gains
The Center for Progressive Reform stands with all who are working to advance equity and equality for LGBTQ Americans. To commemorate Pride Month, we asked three CPR leaders to weigh in on progress in this area. Below, Board Member Laurie Ristino and Member Scholars Victor Flatt and Steph Tai offer their perspectives on progress made and work to do, as well as misperceptions about the LGBTQ community and lessons learned from past victories.
Laurie Ristino
“Over the last several decades, LGBTQ rights have made serious progress, gains that require vigilant advocacy to retain and further equal justice for all LGBTQ people.
“At the same time, the struggle for BIPOC rights continues. In America, we have simply failed to address racial injustice and inequity. What can we learn from the advocacy successes of the LGBTQ experience to move the dial forward so all Americans may enjoy the same rights, protections, and considerations?”
Ristino is a CPR Board member and Member Scholar. She is also founder of Strategies for a Sustainable Future, an environmental consulting firm.
Victor Flatt
“The rights of LGBTQ folks have come further and faster in the last 10 years than I could have anticipated in the late ‘80s …
One of the most vexing environmental law issues of the last three decades is the scope of the term "waters of the United States" (WOTUS) in the Clean Water Act — and what marshes, lakes, and streams fall under its purview. A connected legal question stretching back even further is how much deference to give agencies in policymaking and legal interpretations.
These issues are present in both the Trump administration's final "Waters of the United States" rule, which narrowly defines waters subject to the act, and the Biden administration's likely attempt to expand that definition. The Trump administration's narrow approach dramatically reduces the number of waterways under federal protection. A broader definition would restore and possibly expand protections to better safeguard public and environmental health.
A new study on the economic analyses in the Trump rule (which I co-authored) concludes that its supporting economic analyses rely on questionable …
Update: On March 10, 2021, the Senate voted to confirm Michael Regan as EPA Administrator.
President-elect Joe Biden is set to name Michael Regan to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Regan is currently the secretary of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, and his past experience includes earlier stints at EPA and the Environmental Defense Fund. He would be the first Black man to serve as EPA administrator.
Donald Trump and the industry allies he appointed to head this critical agency — Scott Pruitt and Andrew Wheeler — harmed it through a series of air, water, pesticide, and chemical safety rollbacks. Pruitt and Wheeler also imposed damaging procedural rules on the agency that, if left in place, will make it next to impossible to use the best science to craft environmental protections — or to justify them in the first place. Adding insult to injury, the …
This op-ed was originally published by The Revelator. Reprinted under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in a wave of worrisome and needless regulatory relaxations that have increased pollution across the United States. Recent reporting by the Associated Press and other outlets has documented more than 3,000 pandemic-based requests from polluters to state agencies and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for waivers of environmental requirements. Numerous state governments, with the tacit encouragement of the EPA, went along with many of those requests. All too often, those waivers — requested, ostensibly, to protect American workers from exposure to the coronavirus — were granted with little or no review, notwithstanding the risks the resulting emissions posed to public health and the environment.
EPA invited this wave of waivers back in March, announcing it would relax its enforcement upon request, under cover of …
It's not just wildfires in Australia or our rapidly warming oceans (to the tune of five Hiroshima bombs every second). Climate change affects every aspect of our world, and it's forcing us reevaluate all of the human institutions we've built up over years, decades, and centuries. One such institution that CPR Member Scholar Victor Flatt has begun investigating is the legal profession itself.
Members of the legal profession are bound by a code of professional ethics that applies in the state in which they practice, and this code spells out their professional responsibilities to their clients, to the legal system, and to broader society. As Flatt explains in an article in the current issue of the Environmental Law Institute's Environmental Forum, it's time to review these rules of professional responsibility through the lens of climate change. In particular, his article looks at the climate implications of Rule …
Late last week, a federal district court in Montana blocked construction on the Keystone XL pipeline. The decision in Indigenous Environmental Network, et al. v. U.S. Department of State is a significant victory for the environment and a major blow to the ultimate completion of the controversial pipeline.
The case centered on the Trump administration’s 2017 decision to reverse the State Department’s initial rejection of the pipeline project, issued in 2015. The court noted that the environmental impact statement prepared by the Trump State Department in support of the reversal is deficient in its analysis of future oil prices and the need for the project, the cumulative impact of Keystone with the Alberta Clipper pipeline, the need to finish analysis of cultural impacts along the route, and the need for updated oil spill information. The court also concluded that the Trump administration failed to …
Sarah Lamdan, Professor of Law at CUNY Law School, co-authored this post, which is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
This chapter is excerpted from a law review article that is forthcoming in U. Arkansas Law Review, titled "Taking a Page from FDA’s Prescription Medicine Information Rules: Reimagining Environmental Information for Climate Change."
What Happened?
In August 2017, Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the southern United States in rapid succession. These massive hurricanes wrought widespread devastation — destroying buildings, flooding neighborhoods, and taking lives. Harvey shattered the national rainfall record for a single storm, dropping more than 50 inches of rain in a 36-hour period. Thousands of stranded Houstonians waded through chest-deep floodwaters. Unbeknownst to them, those residents were wading through more than just water. Many storm victims were in fact wading through a toxic stew. The same …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report.
What Happened
According to the Houston Chronicle, there were more than 100 releases of hazardous substances into land, air, and water during and after Hurricane Harvey. At least one dozen of the Superfund sites listed in or near Houston were flooded during the storm.
On September 3, 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) acknowledged breaches at 13 area Superfund sites. Later in September, the EPA reported that it had recovered 517 containers of potentially toxic hazardous waste from Superfund sites that flooded during Harvey. In its first mention of these releases on September 22, 2017, the agency provided no information as to where the materials had come from, what they were, or how hazardous they were.
More than a month after the hurricane, EPA acknowledged a serious breach …
This post is part of CPR's From Surviving to Thriving: Equity in Disaster Planning and Recovery report. Click here to read previously posted chapters.
On August 23, 2017, Texas Governor Greg Abbott declared a state of emergency as Hurricane Harvey approached the Texas Coast. That state of emergency was ultimately expanded to 60 counties in Texas. Emergency declarations in Texas (as in many states and for the federal government) allow the governor to unilaterally suspend specific rules and regulations if they are expected to hinder disaster recovery. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) asked Governor Abbott to suspend dozens of environmental rules on August 28, 2017, as Harvey was continuing to pummel Houston and the Texas Gulf Coast area.
The waiver request specified air quality rules related to emission “upset” events as well as monitoring and releases of unpermitted Volatile Organic Compounds. Predictably, the request indicated …
This op-ed originally ran in the Houston Chronicle.
Every day during the Hurricane Harvey disaster, our hearts would sink as we kept hearing the word "unprecedented" again and again. Harvey wasn't supposed to strengthen so fast; it shouldn't have stalled where it did. Every day as we hoped the worst was over, Harvey would pummel us even harder.
Everything was outside the norm, breaking all records. Over 50 inches of rain. Houston's "wettest month in recorded history." High river marks exceeded by 10 feet. A total volume of rainwater four miles square and two miles tall. Millions of residents evacuated or sheltering in place in America's fourth-largest city. All of them afraid.
Just days later came Irma, the most powerful Atlantic hurricane on record, whose strength was matched only by its unpredictability. Who should evacuate and where? Then, in less than a week …
