NJ Turns its Back on the 14th Amendment – and History

In Stop polluters from choking Black lives, The New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized:

 

Time to stop polluters from kneeling on the neck of communities like these. In response to their strong call for environmental justice, the Legislature is finally acting more courageously, and moving a bill that could help, rather than simply studying the problem again.

 

It would require the state to produce a list of “overburdened communities,” defined as either low income, with a high population of people of color or non-English speakers. In these places, your permit has to go through a special process.

 

Incinerators, gas plants, coal plants, landfills, sewage treatment plants and the like would need to do an environmental justice impact statement for the state, share it with the public and hold a hearing. The Department of Environmental Protection would have the power to deny it or require new safety conditions.

 

My emphasis. 

 

There is no justice in treating people unequally before the law. Whenever you hear “justice” qualified by an adjective--“social” justice, “environmental” justice, “racial” justice, and the like--you hear the obliteration of justice. What about people who speak English, are “non-colored”, or are economically more successful? — (what income or net worth does one have to achieve to be subjected to less stringent pollution standards?) 

 

There is only one human race. Metaphysically, human life is exclusively individual. Therefor, justice is individual, not collective. Given the common fundamental nature of all individuals as beings of reason and free will, justice is impartial. Justice does not consider factors like language, wealth, or skin color. Justice does not consider the community a person lives in. Law applies equally to all individuals, or it is not just and, in fact, not law at all. Whatever conflict or issue is being considered, the standards of judgement is applicable to all individuals equally and at all times, grounded in the universal equality of individual rights. 

 

Justice applies to pollution laws no less than to all other valid laws. Pollution law should be based on objective criteria. Anti-pollution law must be based objectively on facts, truth, and proven science, not the color, language, or income of individuals. 

 

The Star-Ledger implies that pollution standards are lower in Newark and implies that color, income, and language bigotry is the reason. I don’t know that that is true, but if so, it is wrong and should be corrected by applying the standards justly. Bigotry should be eliminated, not rearranged. Bigotry has no place in the application of the law. But embedding bigotry explicitly in the law as a fix for unequal enforcement of prior law is outrageous, especially considering the history of law in America and the progress in correcting the flaws.

 

Equal protection of the law is implied in the Declaration of Independence and in the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution. But it was made explicit in the 14th Amendment, one of the three “Civil War Amendments” that corrected the flawed interpretation of  the Founding documents that allowed slavery to persist for nearly 90 years after the Decaration of Independence established the United States of America as a nation Founded upon political equality for all men and women. And it took another 90 years of hard fighting to fully implement that equality because of the reactionary 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling and the like. 

 

Yet apparently some NJ legislators haven’t learned from history. Here we are, in 2020, reinstating unequal protection of the law. 

 

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