CBE Legal Muscle Wins in Court for Environmental Justice

Communities for a Better Environment uses a full range of tactics to fight for environmental justice–and legal work is central. CBE’s legal team fights for better air quality, clean energy, smarter land use and transportation, and climate justice.

CBE’s cutting-edge legal approach has scored numerous victories that have prevented and reduced industrial pollution in California’s hardest-hit communities. Litigation, often in conjunction with focused, grassroots organizing and coalition building efforts, amplifies the voice of people of color in the low-income neighborhoods that suffer the most from adverse health effects of pollution, such as asthma, cardiovascular illness, and cancer.

Some of CBE’s legal work has also given Californians a seat at the policy table to make their cases before state and local government agencies.

CBE’s legal strategy generates results that are both local and international—it supports local organizing and wins court victories in global-scale policy debates that have local environmental impacts, such as freight transport, air quality, and climate change.