Industrial agriculture has dominated food production in the United States for close to one hundred years. It has contributed to major public health problems, including segregation, climate change, the depletion of natural resources, malnutrition, and mental illness. Integrating sustainable agriculture into urban communities can help alleviate these public health issues. Unfortunately, Euclidean zoning laws and the current allocation of crop subsidies in the United States obstruct meaningful progress. Sustainable food production requires national food policies that drastically change the way food is produced. When the National Land Use Policy Act was defeated in 1974, momentum for a national land use law slowed to a halt. Subsequently, scholarship around this barrier and a national land use scheme is limited and often outdated. To address this hindrance, Congress should confer certain rights on urban sustainable farmers through legislation that combines elements of state enacted “by right” and “right-to-farm” statutes. The federal government’s authority to create a national land use scheme derives from multiple Constitutional sources. Congress should look to the Commerce Clause as the best source for enacting a national land use law. Local government also continues to occupy a significant role in land use schemes. This Article illustrates what states and municipalities can do, and what they have done, to alleviate land use barriers to sustainable urban agriculture. The changes proposed in this Article represent just one step toward a future of sustainable food production, but it is a critical step at a critical time.
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concept like common-law nuisance can be manipulated into a coherent framework for assessing social institutions.161 As the Third Circuit recognized in its policy-oriented discussion of Baptiste’s environmental justice implications, the stakes of its decision were high.162 Allowing the district court’s erroneous reasoning to stand would strip primarily low-income and minority communities of their private right to bring public and private nuisance claims for overwhelming environmental hazards.163 Furthermore, the district court’s ruling immunized bad environmental actors from liability for public nuisances if they ensured an environmental burden’s widespread impact.164 The Third Circuit’s decision provides much-needed direction to Pennsylvania courts attempting to make sense of nuisance law.165 Baptiste’s ruling supports deference to the appropriate application of principles including specific harm and overlapping nuisances, and cautions courts against improperly limiting nuisance claims on the basis of proximity or class size.166 By overruling the district court’s decision, the Third Circuit’s holding preserves a critical instrumentality for environmental injustice victims to seek redress for infringements on their personal 160. For a discussion of the relevance and versatility of the Third Circuit’s holding in Baptiste, see supra notes 154-57 and accompanying text. 161. For a discussion of nuisance law’s abstract nature, see supra notes 41-46 and accompanying text. 162. For a discussion of the Third Circuit’s consideration of Baptiste’s critical environmental justice implications, see supra notes 141-43 and accompanying text. 163. For a discussion of how the district court’s holding in Baptiste would prevent minority populations from bringing nuisance claims, see supra note 139 and accompanying text. 164. For a discussion of how the district court’s holding in Baptiste would exempt large-scale polluters from liability, see supra note 145 and accompanying text. 165. For a discussion of the perplexities of nuisance law, see supra notes 41-46 and accompanying text. 166. For a discussion of the district court’s incorrect limitation of class size, see supra notes 111-13 and accompanying text. For a discussion of the district court’s improper imposition of a neighboring requirement, see supra notes 124-28 and accompanying text. 23 Bradley: Environmental Justice Class Action Rises Above the Rubbish: The T Published by Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law Digital Repository, 2021 232 VILLANOVA ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL Vol. 32 rights by large-scale industrial nuisances.167 This decision revives civil litigation, including class action nuisance suits, as a strategic means of protecting private rights.168 Currently, environmental regulations are underenforced profoundly by public agencies and officials, and constitutional claims for environmental racism are wildly unsuccessful.169 Baptiste restores agency to individuals and communities who, unlike many public agencies, are acutely aware of the environmental burdens impacting their populations and more incentivized to take action against industrial facilities’ harmful conduct.170 It is important to note that Baptiste not only represents a substantial victory for environmental justice plaintiffs, but has considerable implications for environmental sustainability.171 In the face of mounting concerns related to climate change and air pollution, this decision prioritizes adherence to environmental regulations and statutory guidelines.172 By allowing large groups of plaintiffs to sue for widespread nuisances, Baptiste has the impetus to pressure industrial actors to operate more responsibly and reduce environmental hazards to avoid litigation and potential damages.173 The broad scope of the Third Circuit’s holding also has the potential to add momentum to pressing environmental justice issues.174 Such concerns include the siting of hazardous waste facilities and other undesirable land uses that cause nuisances and environmental health risks in poor and minority communities.175 167. See Emilee Larkin, Smelly Pennsylvania Landfill Must Face Class Suit, COURTHOUSE NEWS SERV. (July 13, 2020), https://www.courthousenews.com/smellypennsylvania-landfill-must-face-class-suit/ (noting plaintiffs’ counsel stated Third Circuit’s holding reaffirms civil litigation as tool for protection of property rights against corporate polluters). 168. For a discussion of nuisance law as a means of protecting environmental rights, see supra note 8 and accompanying text. 169. For a discussion of environmental justice plaintiffs’ difficulties in bringing environmental justice claims, see supra note 8 and accompanying text. 170. For a discussion of public officials’ underenforcement of environmental laws in low-income, minority communities, see supra note 143 and accompanying text. 171. For further discussion of nuisance law as a means of protecting environmental rights, see supra note 8 and accompanying text. 172. For further discussion of the SWMA and its relevant guidelines, see supra notes 51-56 and accompanying text. 173. For further discussion of nuisance law as a means of protecting environmental rights, see supra note 8 and accompanying text. 174. For a discussion of additional environmental issues affecting low-income, minority populations, see supra note 3 and accompanying text. 175. For a discussion of additional environmental issues affecting low-income, minority populations, see supra note 3 and accompanying text. The Third Circuit’s holding in Baptiste may also affect other urgent legal issues in which class 24 Villanova Environmental Law Journal, Vol. 32, Iss. 2 [2021], Art. 3 https://digitalcommons.law.villanova.edu/elj/vol32/iss2/3 ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AND COMMON-LAW NUISANCE REMEDIES 233 The strategic use of common-law nuisance doctrines may provide a non-traditional yet effective approach to large-scale litigation in these areas by alleviating environmental burdens on communities of color.176 By establishing a clear framework for analysis of classaction nuisance claims, Baptiste can serve as precedent for courts in Pennsylvania and other jurisdictions that are ruling on these timely environmental law issues.177 The Third Circuit’s decision in Baptiste — crafted in such a way as to “count for the future” — is a beacon of hope for low-income and minority communities suffering beneath towering smoke stacks and invisible clouds of noxious gases.178 It serves as a reminder that common-law nuisance is not a legal relic of limited use, but rather a cogent means of combatting widespread industrial nuisances and pollution.179 In the wake of Baptiste, class action nuisance claims have been reframed as a vital basis of relief for injuries caused by the unreasonable infringement of private rights.180 This decision serves to restore power to individual persons so they may harness the utility of common-law nuisance doctrines when pursuing just and effective remedies to increase their overall quality of life.181
