Critical Infrastructure, Environmental Racism, and Protest: A Case Study in Cancer Alley, Louisiana

The ability to assemble, protest, and air grievances in the public sphere of one’s community is not only a cherished right but is also an essential safeguard of other rights. In the Black communities of Cancer Alley, a polluted industrial corridor in Southern Louisiana, the state’s critical infrastructure law has rendered protest on or near the region’s ubiquitous industrial infrastructure a felony. This Note describes the history of critical infrastructure laws in states across the country, as well as the legal challenges brought against critical infrastructure laws and their counterparts. Louisiana’s critical infrastructure law, when intersected with environmental racism, has the potential to disproportionately criminalize protest in Black communities. Equal Protection and First Amendment law do not adequately address this disproportionate censorship of Black communities based on their high concentration of environmental hazards. This Note proposes two solutions: first, Arlington Heights may be read to allow the historical context and history of segregation in a region act as evidence of discriminatory intent; second, Time, Place, and Manner doctrine can be easily expanded to incorporate issues of racial geography.