Legal News

Law Blog Obituary: Luke Cole

By Chris Herring

In the preface of his book “From the Ground Up,” environmental law mastermind Luke Cole started with these words: “Stories are one way we transmit our history, share our successes and learn from our losses. Stories are also an important part of the movement for environmental justice …”

It is largely because of Cole’s story that there was a movement for environmental justice.

The San Francisco-based lawyer, credited with leading the charge to explore and rectify environmental inequalities in poor, minority-heavy areas, died in a car accident in Uganda last week. He was 46. Click here for the LA Times story and here for the NYT story.

After graduating from Stanford undergrad and Harvard Law, Cole (seen here announcing a civil rights complaint at Hunters Point in San Francisco) co-founded the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which has assisted in some of the nation’s most important environment-based legal cases to date.

One example: He helped block a company from building a toxic waste incinerator in the primarily Hispanic town of Kettleman City, Calif. One of his arguments to the court was that the company failed to translate its environmental impact report into Spanish — even though a large proportion of the town’s residents couldn’t speak English.

Cole took similar action with a group of Camden, N.J., residents in the late 1990s when he argued that the city’s decision to issue a permit for a cement recycling plant would lessen the quality of life for blacks there, who were already living in a polluted area. Citing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the U.S. District Court in Camden ruled in favor of Cole and the plaintiffs. (The case would later get overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which ruled in a related case that only the Environmental Protection Agency could determine antidiscrimination cases like the Camden one.)

Cole eventually took a position on the EPA’s National Environmental Justice Advisory Council, serving from 1996 until 2000.

According to the LA Times piece, Cole died while on a vacation with his wife, who was also hurt in the car accident (according to the LA Times, she’s recovering from her injuries in Amsterdam). Cole was enjoying a four-month sabbatical, and had recently visited Antarctica, Madagascar, South Africa and South America.

Photo: The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 11, 2009 (boomark / email).