Impact Fund Fall Grants of $150K Support Impact Litigation for Communities Seeking Justice
Sanjana Manjeshwar, Grant Program Associate
As many in our community anticipate the challenges of the months and years ahead, we are grateful that we have impact litigation as a tool to push back against injustice and seek accountability for harmful practices. Our newest grantees are doing amazing work on behalf of incarcerated people, immigrant detainees, agricultural workers, rural communities, and people of color. In our fall grantmaking cycle, we granted $150,000 to support seven impact lawsuits challenging injustice across the country. We are excited to share their inspiring stories.
Protecting Civil Rights in Prison and Immigration Detention
Two of our new grantees’ cases aim to safeguard the rights of people incarcerated in prisons and immigration detention centers.
In Colorado, civil rights law firm Maxted Law LLC is bringing a class action lawsuit challenging forced labor in Colorado prisons. In 2018, Colorado voters approved an amendment to their state constitution that makes slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional in all settings, including prisons. Despite this vote, coerced labor in state prisons remains prevalent six years later.
Incarcerated people who are unable to work or refuse to work have been threatened with more time in prison, solitary confinement, loss of contact with family and loved ones, the inability to purchase hygiene products, and other restrictive punishments. As a result, they essentially have no choice but to work. This case seeks a ruling declaring that the current practice of compelled labor in Colorado prisons violates the state constitution, which would benefit the more than 15,000 people incarcerated in the state. Maxted Law is litigating the case in collaboration with Colorado workers’ rights nonprofit Towards Justice, a former Impact Fund grantee.
In Pennsylvania, asylum-seekers who have won their immigration cases and have a legal right to remain in the U.S. are still being detained.
We also made a grant to support a class action brought by the Amica Center for Immigrant Rights challenging the prolonged and unlawful detention of immigrants who have a legal right to remain in the United States. In Pennsylvania, hundreds of people have already won their immigration cases due to a credible fear of persecution or torture in their home countries—but the Pennsylvania field office of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continues to detain them indefinitely as it appeals the decisions and tries to deport them to other countries.
The group of detained immigrants bringing the case includes recent asylum seekers, long-term green card holders, and individuals with spouses and children who are U.S. citizens. According to the lawsuit, their detention violates longstanding legal precedent as well as ICE’s own policies, which require the release of non-citizens immediately following a grant of fear-based relief. This case seeks to compel ICE to follow its own policies and to ensure the release of all immigrants who are unlawfully detained in Pennsylvania. A positive ruling in this case could also strengthen similar efforts in other states.
Ensuring Access to Clean and Safe Water
Two of our grantees are bringing environmental justice cases seeking to prevent water pollution harming communities who are already facing disproportionate amounts of environmental harm.
We supported an administrative case brought by the Environmental Law Foundation on behalf of a coalition of Central California environmental groups and community members who lack safe drinking water. For decades, communities across Central California have been dealing with elevated rates of nitrate pollution in their drinking water due to agricultural runoff contaminating the groundwater, with concentrations rising every year. The areas with the most contamination tend to be the areas with the highest populations of low-income and Latine people, who then experience disproportionately high rates of the health problems attributable to nitrate pollution such as cancer, birth defects, and vision problems.
In 2021, California’s State Water Resources Control Board finally enacted strict standards for agricultural nitrogen use and discharge in an attempt to reduce nitrate pollution in groundwater. However, in 2023, the State Water Board then rolled back these measures without conducting an adequate environmental justice analysis. The lawsuit alleges that the Water Board’s removal of the nitrate limits is a violation of California law and the Water Board’s own policies.
In Idaho, Big Ag is violating the Clean Water Act by polluting the Snake River.
In Idaho, environmental nonprofit Snake River Waterkeeper is bringing a case against the J.R. Simplot Company for polluting the Snake River through its cattle feedlot in the community of Grand View. The feedlot, one of the largest concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in the country, contains up to 150,000 cattle that can generate an estimated 5-10 million pounds of manure a day. Much of this animal waste then ends up in the Snake River. Sections of the river are so polluted with manure that, in certain months, the water is unsafe for local residents to even touch.
Making matters worse, the Snake River is a critical source of drinking water for rural communities across Idaho, and many residents do not have access to in-home water filtration systems needed to clean the drinking water. In addition, the water pollution has contaminated local fish populations and made them unsafe to eat, which is particularly problematic for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, who have treaty rights to fish in the Snake River. Under the Clean Water Act, companies are required to obtain a permit for any facility releasing pollutants into a public water source, but Simplot has no such permit. The lawsuit, which recently defeated a motion by Simplot to dismiss the case, seeks to establish that the company’s discharge of animal waste into the Snake River is unlawful and must be stopped.
Challenging Segregation and Displacement Along Racial Lines
Finally, two of our grantees are challenging injustices that stem from historic practices rooted in systemic racism.
Texas community group Rethink35 is seeking to prevent the Texas Department of Transportation’s planned expansion of the I-35 highway in Austin, which runs along a historic racial segregation line dividing the city. In the 20th century, redlining practices confined Black and Latine people to the eastern part of Austin, while the central and western parts of the city were predominantly white. This segregation was intensified by the original construction of the highway in 1962, which destroyed homes and businesses belonging to people of color and increased toxic air pollution in their neighborhoods. Today, communities of color east of I-35 already suffer from higher rates of asthma and heart disease and have lower life expectancies.
Highway construction has long been used to racially segregate communities. The proposed expansion of the I-35 highway in Austin, Texas, will exacerbate the environmental injustice that already exists.
The lawsuit alleges that the proposed expansion of I-35 would mirror the impacts of the highway’s initial construction by further displacing people from homes and businesses and widening the barrier separating East Austin from the rest of the city. In addition, expanding the highway is projected to increase vehicle traffic by 45%, worsening the already-poor air quality in parts of East Austin. The case aims to stop the expansion of the highway and require the city to consider alternatives that would divert traffic away from the city center.
We also made a grant to Oregon Law Center to support a civil rights case against the city of Portland and Legacy Emanual Hospital for their intentional destruction of a Black neighborhood. In the 1960s and 1970s, a thriving Black community in Portland was displaced due to a planned hospital expansion. Hundreds of families were forced to leave their homes and businesses, which were then demolished. However, the hospital expansion never happened. Over fifty years later, survivors and their descendants discovered that the real motive behind the neighborhood’s destruction was a racist desire to remove Black people from the economically valuable area.
Today, the land still remains unused. According to the lawsuit, the vacant land serves as a constant reminder of what these communities once had and what was taken from them. The people who were forcibly displaced were never compensated for the loss of their family homes, depriving their descendants of intergenerational wealth. The case aims to finally obtain financial restitution for the people who lost their homes and community, and to hold the city and hospital accountable for conspiring to destroy the neighborhood.
Our new grantees’ work exemplifies how impact litigation can be a powerful way for communities to join together and seek justice in the face of systemic harm. We are so excited to follow the progress of their cases in the coming years. And now, more than ever, we are grateful for the freedom to challenge unfair systems through the courts.
Each quarter, we make grants to support impact litigation in pursuit of economic, environmental, racial, and social justice. To learn more about our grant program and upcoming grant application deadlines, check out the “Apply” page of our website or contact us here.