A Drive Through Cancer Alley: An Analysis of the Legal Strategies Used to Seek Environmental Justice in Louisiana’s Petrochemical Corridor

Abstract

Because of its high concentration of petrochemical production facilities in the area, the 85-mile stretch along the Mississippi River between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana has earned the nickname “Cancer Alley.” The history of manufacturing and production in this area of majority-Black populated communities has also made Cancer Alley a hub for environmental justice (EJ) efforts. Scholars have highlighted the range of legal strategies these local communities use to pursue EJ efforts. Some of this work specifically considers American researched federalism—the principle that regulatory power should be shared between levels of government—in the environmental context, with scholars reaching differing conclusions about which level of government is best suited to address the environmental harms. Despite this disagreement, it is clear that the interests of at-risk individuals are often ignored, or minimized, by all levels of government—local, state, and federal. This suggests that scholars who advocate for a specific level being best suited for environmental policymaking are minimizing the extent to which, from the perspective of local community groups, no level of government can be fully trusted to support their interests. This thesis examines local community groups in Cancer Alley who, in response to governments prioritizing industry over the wellbeing of local stakeholders, have taken legal action across multiple levels of legal jurisdiction to challenge unresponsive governments and corporations. A qualitative research approach was used, primarily focusing on two main data sources: legal case documents and interviews with legal experts and leaders of local community groups. Focusing on six court cases from 2020 to 2025, court documents were analyzed to identify what legal claims are used by local community groups to challenge environmental injustices, highlighting their intentional strategy of pursuing legal action across multiple levels of government. These findings reveal that when environmental harms are not being addressed in the policy arena, local community groups have to commit to multi-pronged legal strategies in order to advance their interests and hold governments accountable. Further, literature on the EJ movement and legal strategies could benefit from focusing on the direct efforts of those participating in grassroots activism, rather than offering top-down analyses of EJ strategies.