A lawsuit seeking a moratorium on new industry in St. James Parish and accusing local government of steering polluting plants into Black neighborhoods can proceed after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case.

The parish government had appealed to the nation's highest court after a federal appeals court breathed new life into the case earlier this year.

Filed in 2023 in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, the suit was brought by Mt. Triumph Baptist Church and two environmental groups, Rise St. James and Inclusive Louisiana. They accuse the parish of issuing discriminatory land-use decisions for decades.

So far the legal dispute hasn't been over the merits of the allegations, instead focusing on the right of the plaintiffs to sue and whether the lawsuit was filed in a timely

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