A Trump judge just rolled back key civil rights protections in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley

The decision could open the door for other industry-friendly states to follow suit.

Last week, in a culmination of a decade-long fight, James Cain, a federal judge in Louisiana who was appointed by president Trump, blocked the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Justice from pursuing enforcement actions based on “disparate impacts”—or the idea that a regulation might disproportionately harm one group of people over another.