type: timeline_event
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin orders the closure of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights (OEJECR) and eliminates environmental justice divisions in all 10 EPA regional offices, affecting approximately 200 employees who are placed on administrative leave. Zeldin justifies the elimination by describing environmental justice programs as 'forced discrimination programs' and claiming the office funded 'left-wing activists instead of actually spending those dollars to directly remediate environmental issues.' The closure eliminates a $3 billion grant program from the Inflation Reduction Act that funded national environmental justice initiatives, ends enforcement of Title VI civil rights protections against environmental racism, and removes federal oversight of pollution disproportionately affecting communities of color and low-income areas. The OEJECR, created in September 2022 by merging three existing offices, had been responsible for investigating environmental discrimination, enforcing civil rights laws, providing resources to pollution-affected communities, and addressing the systemic pattern whereby Black Americans are 75% more likely to live near polluting facilities compared to white Americans. The elimination represents the fulfillment of Project 2025's explicit call to dismantle environmental justice programs and removes federal protections for communities subjected to environmental racism through the arbitrary siting of polluting industries in their neighborhoods. Former deputy assistant administrator Matthew Tejada warns that 'generations of progress are being erased' and that government relationships with affected communities 'will be nearly impossible to restore.' The closure enables industrial operations to proceed 'with greater impunity' while leaving vulnerable communities 'bereft of necessary safeguards,' effectively ending three decades of federal efforts to address environmental injustice dating back to President Clinton's 1994 executive order protecting minority and low-income communities from disproportionate environmental impacts.