Clinic Files Petition in California Highway Construction Case
On Nov. 15, 2024, Friends of Calwa Inc. and Fresno Building Healthy Communities — community organizations that advocate for the health and well-being of South Fresno, California residents — submitted a petition for a writ of mandate to the California Court of Appeals asking for the appellate court’s immediate intervention in a complex legal saga that brings into focus the present-day impacts of highway construction on communities of color.
The petition, written by student attorneys with the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic of the Jerome N. Frank Legal Services Organization at Yale Law School, is the latest development in an ongoing legal battle against the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). At issue is a major highway expansion project that “would accelerate air pollution, industrial buildout, and heavy-duty truck traffic in already overburdened neighborhoods” in South Fresno, according to the petition.
Community Organizations Come Together
Fresno Building Healthy Communities and Friends of Calwa sued Caltrans and FHWA in March 2023 in federal district court over the agencies’ approval of the highway expansion project. The lawsuit challenged the sufficiency of the agencies’ environmental review of the project under state and federal law as well as their compliance with civil rights and housing protections.
The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) require Caltrans to thoroughly analyze the environmental impacts of the project on the surrounding community. But Caltrans’ analysis claimed that there were no communities in the project area that would be impacted.
The omission, according to court filings, ignored tens of thousands of longstanding residents who live in neighboring communities. The health and safety of those residents are closely tied to levels of air pollution emitted by heavy-duty trucks traversing State Route 99 and traveling through local roadways connected at the interchanges, the petition states. The petition also cites correspondence among Caltrans staff documenting design of the highway project to accommodate truck traffic associated with a planned 2,940-acre industrial park, which is expected to site upwards of 19 million square feet of commercial and industrial space next to the highway. The lawsuit charges Caltrans with breaking the law by failing to disclose the highway project’s link to the industrial park to regulators and the public.
“South Fresno residents have shown up time and time again to protest the highway expansion through public meetings and letters to the agency. Yet Caltrans still erased their communities from its environmental analysis and hid information about the project’s connection to the planned industrial park. These omissions are illegal,” said Cat Xu ’25, a clinic student who worked on the petition.
In what Friends of Calwa and Fresno Building Healthy Communities characterize as an attempt to shut the courthouse door on residents, Caltrans challenged the federal court’s ability to decide the state law claims, arguing that they should be heard in state court. After the community organizations voluntarily refiled in California state court, the agency filed a motion for summary adjudication in June 2024 seeking again to throw out the CEQA claims, this time arguing that the state court action was filed too late.
Over the summer, a team of law students in the Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School took over for the Stanford Environmental Law Clinic, which had previously represented the community organizations.
The Law School clinic team spent the summer briefing an opposition to Caltrans’ motion for summary adjudication. In September the team traveled to South Fresno, where Xu and Danielle Hopkins ’26, two student attorneys on the team, argued their clients’ opposition in Fresno Superior Court.
The trial court deliberated for over a month but ultimately sided with Caltrans, dismissing the community groups’ CEQA claims before they could be heard on the merits.
“Neither community organization is known to go down without a fight. So, we knew that the work wouldn’t stop here,” said Hopkins.
“We have some of the worst air quality in the nation, and the health impacts are deadly and multigenerational. Caltrans’ failure to consider the health of our communities is contrary to California’s commitment to advance public health and environmental justice. California cannot claim to be a leader in climate change action while continuing to dump toxic pollution into Black and brown neighborhoods,” said Sandra Celedon, President and CEO of Fresno Building Healthy Communities.
The petition filed by the clinic asks the California Court of Appeals to issue a peremptory writ of mandate vacating the trial court’s order granting summary adjudication for Caltrans and allowing the CEQA claims to be decided on their merits.
Friends of Calwa, Fresno Building Healthy Communities, and South Fresno residents have been vocal opponents to the project, and as they wait to hear back from the court, their work continues.
“We are simply asking Caltrans to honor its commitment to change how they plan, design, build, and maintain transportation investments to create a more resilient system that more equitably distributes the benefits and burdens to current and future generations of Californians,” said Laura Moreno, Executive Director of Friends of Calwa. “They cannot continue to treat vulnerable communities as their dumping ground. Our neighborhoods deserve good transportation investments that meet the needs of the people who live here. Enough is enough.”
The ongoing advocacy work from the organizations led the FHWA to reconsider its approval of the project, with FHWA and the U.S. Department of Transportation voluntarily requesting that the court remand claims against them in the related federal lawsuit so they could reconsider the project’s consistency with federal air quality laws. Over the summer, residents demanded that FHWA put a halt to the project. Represented by the clinic, Friends of Calwa and Fresno Building Healthy Communities submitted an extensive public comment letter supported by expert analysis documenting flaws in the project’s review and its impacts on issues like localized air pollution hot spots, traffic congestion, and climate change. FHWA continues to consult with expert agencies and is expected to deliver a new decision on the project in the coming months.
A History of Inequity
The battle over the Fresno project puts a new spotlight on fights across the country to tackle the nation’s legacy of racially motivated and inequitable highway construction projects and transportation infrastructure in general.
In 2021, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said that “there is racism physically built into some of our highways.” Historically, highways were often built directly through thriving Black and brown communities in the United States, creating physical barriers segregating communities of color from whiter residential areas and economic resources while saddling them with highway and industrial pollution.
South Fresno is an example of this pattern, according to the clinic. Transportation infrastructure, and specifically the construction of State Route 99 in the ’50s and ’60s, left the city of Fresno racially and economically divided, with whiter wealthier residents residing in North Fresno, and lower income people of color living in South Fresno. Today, South Fresno is more than 90% people of color, and most residents are low-income.
“State and local governments continue to concentrate development of polluting industry and accompanying heavy-duty truck traffic in South Fresno residents’ backyards,” said clinic student Taylor Wurts ’25. “This continued industrial buildout negatively impacts a community that already ranks in the 100th percentile of cumulative pollution burdens in the state.”
Recently, the U.S. Department of Transportation launched a Reconnecting Communities Program offering grants to communities that are looking to create transformative, community-led solutions to help in addressing the negative impacts of past transportation infrastructure investments and improve community connectivity and cohesion.
“This country must face its past and current obsession with building highways directly through communities of color. Highways serve as major drivers of both climate change and localized air pollution in these communities, effecting the health and safety of those in their proximities,” said Morgan Feldenkris ’25. “South Fresno residents and our clients are putting forward exactly the vision for reconnecting and reinvesting in their communities that the federal government has called for, and it is long past time that regulators follow their lead.”
The Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School provides students an opportunity to participate in full-service legal support of community-based organizations, Tribal Nations, and nonprofit coalitions seeking to advance environmental justice and related concerns such as tribal sovereignty, environmental protection, public health, civil rights, and participatory environmental governance.
Fresno Building Healthy Communities is a nonprofit organization, founded by residents in Fresno, California, to foster and encourage thriving communities where all children and families can live healthy, safe, and productive lives.
Friends of Calwa is a nonprofit organization, founded by residents in Calwa, California, to bring resources and people together to ensure all people, regardless of income level, cultural background or political persuasion, can live in neighborhoods that nurture their development.
Fresno Building Healthy Communities and Friends of Calwa are jointly represented by the Yale Environmental Justice Law and Advocacy Clinic, Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability, and the Public Interest Law Project.
