In a pocket of Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley,” Black residents bear the generational toll of “plantation country” becoming “pollution country.”
Seven times as many people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer than the national average in these disproportionately Black communities.
Now, a federal district court has given those residents something they almost never get: a chance to put the whole system on trial.
On Feb. 9, a judge in New Orleans ruled that groups representing residents of Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, which stretches from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, can proceed with their landmark lawsuit seeking a pause on toxic industrial plants in two majority‑Black districts in St. James Parish.
The court rejected the parish government’s attempt to throw the case out and allowed every claim to move forward. At the core of these claims are two arguments: The parish’s decades‑old land-use practices violate the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, and the 14th Amendment, which grants all Americans equal protection under the law.
The case will force a jury to decide whether the disproportionate placing of facilities, whose pollution is tied to cancer cases, asthma, heart and lung diseases, and neurological issues, is a vestige of slavery.
“For generations, our community has lived under a racist land use system that placed polluting industries in our backyards while ignoring our health, history, and human rights,” said Gail LeBoeuf and Barbara Washington in a statement. They are the founders of Inclusive Louisiana, one of the groups suing the parish.
“This fight has always been about protecting our families [and] honoring our ancestors.”
Much of the industrial facilities in this area are on the exact land where enslaved people cut sugarcane and tended soil on plantations.
In 2023, the group of Black elders sued their county government, claiming officials steered toxic plants into the majority‑Black districts of their parish while shielding white areas.
Since construction of the first industrial plant in 1958, at least 28 out of 32 plants have been placed in the majority-Black districts. No facility has been allowed to locate in majority‑white parts of the parish in nearly 50 years.
At the hearing before the ruling, one of the attorneys defending St. James Parish argued that the government simply couldn’t shield everyone from harm. “They couldn’t protect everyone, or there would be no industry,” Danielle Borel told the U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, an appointee made by President Bill Clinton. “There will always be someone unhappy,” she said.
In Louisiana, wins like this don’t come often. Under the Biden administration, a federal civil rights probe into Cancer Alley concluded without any remedies. Under President Donald Trump, environmental regulators have backed away from key enforcement tools and lawsuits in the corridor.
But what happens next will hinge in part on who ends up in the jury box.
St. James Parish is nearly evenly split between Black and white residents, and petrochemical companies dominate public discourse. They help fund schools, sponsor festivals, and shape what information reaches residents.
Astha Sharma Pokharel, an attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights representing residents, said the group is ready to “get the relief that our clients are entitled to.”
This was St. James Parish’s second failed attempt to get the case thrown out, but on Monday, the judge noted that residents plausibly told “the story of how plantations gave way to industrial facilities that now endanger Black residents’ health.”
“This historic decision recognizes what is at stake in this case: a discriminatory land use system and public health emergency that originated in slavery,” Sharma Pokharel said.
The lawsuit also documents how industrial facilities led to the destruction of residents’ cultural roots, including ancestral burial grounds of people enslaved in St. James. It invokes a provision of the Louisiana Constitution that recognizes the “right of the people to preserve, foster, and promote their respective historic linguistic and cultural origins.”
For people on the ground, the ruling is both vindication and a continuation of a long journey.
Women like LeBoeuf and Washington, and RISE St. James’ Sharon Lavigne, have been knocking on doors in their communities for years, organizing bus rides to rallies in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, memorizing meeting agendas, and sitting through hours of parish council hearings. They do so while also carrying the stories of parents and grandparents who worked those same riverfront fields.
“How many of us have to die?” said Lavigne, a grandmother who has spent the past several years shuffling between burying her neighbors and attending court hearings. “Our prayers, our ancestors, and our fight for justice have been heard. We will keep standing for life, dignity, and the sacredness of this land.”