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If Your Grandfather Could Pollute, So Can You: Environmental "Grandfather Clauses" And Their Role In Environmental Inequity, Heidi Gorovitz Robertson

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

When this country was struggling over voting rights, it adopted what are now called "grandfather clauses" to exclude certain groups from the democratic process. Although various types of laws excluded people from voting, a man could vote if his grandfather had been allowed to vote. [FN3] Applied to modern environmental laws, a grandfather clause, in essence, says, "if your grandfather could pollute, so can you."In the environmental arena, these laws make it much easier for companies or municipalities to expand older, existing facilities than to create new ones. They also make it significantly more difficult for opponents to shut down …