Greening State Constitutions

• Author: Jeremy Cox
• Position: Staff writer at the Bay Journal
• Pages: 50-53

50 | THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, November/December 2021.

Copyright © 2021, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.

FOR anyone who believes that Mary-

land’s laws adequately protect the envi-

ronment and people’s health, state del-

egate Wanika Fisher has an invitation:

Come visit her legislative district.

It is numbered 47B and lies in

Prince George’s County inside the

D.C. Beltway. About 90 percent of the residents are

Black or Hispanic. Many, she said, suer from ail-

ments related to pollutants legally emitted by the

highway’s trac, nearby concrete plants, and other

industrial facilities. Among them is Fisher, who has

asthma. “I am a Black woman statistic in health,”

said Fisher, a 33-year-old criminal defense and per-

sonal injury attorney who was rst elected to the

Maryland House as a Democrat in 2018.

e problem is too big to deal with at the stat-

ute level, as she sees it. at’s why Fisher is trying to

rally her fellow lawmakers around changing the state

constitution to protect environmental rights. As with

the U.S. Constitution’s right to free speech or bear

arms, an environmental rights amendment would

treat clean air and water as a fundamental guarantee,

supporters say.

“is bill allows an avenue for people to get jus-

tice,” said Fisher, who plans to rele the bill during

next year’s legislative session, after it was drowned out

last spring by COVID-19 relief and police reform ef-

forts. “When you put in the constitution that every-

one has a right to a healthy environment, it’s a higher

level” of legal power.

A movement to pass environmental rights amend-

ments, also known as green amendments, is gaining

steam in state legislatures across the country. Since

the start of 2020, the number of states considering

amendments has surged from four to 13, according

to Green Amendments for the Generations, a nation-

al advocacy group dedicated to advancing environ-

mental rights legislation.

Four of those states lie in the Chesapeake Bay wa-

tershed: Delaware, Maryland, New York and West

Virginia. And one of those — New York — is poised

to become the rst state to adopt a green amend-

ment since the heyday of the national environmental

movement in the early 1970s. e State Assembly

passed the measure by broad majorities in February,

sending it to a statewide voter referendum in No-

vember for nal approval.

Pennsylvania, also in the bay watershed, passed

an environmental rights amendment in 1971. But it

spent more than 40 years in the legal wilderness after

being hobbled by a court ruling. Legal victories over

TESTIMONY

Greening

State

Constitutions

Activists and lawma kers are leading the

charge to amend state charters to protect

enironmenta l rights. Pennsylania is one

success story — but the road to other

green ame ndments won’t be easy

Jeremy Cox

is a staff wr iter at the Bay

Journal.