The NYU School of Law introduced a new experiential learning lab for students to conduct research and litigation focused on environmental inequities and health issues affecting marginalized communities at a Wednesday evening panel.

The Environmental and Climate Justice Lab is a part of NYU Law’s Environmental Justice Initiative — a joint collaboration between the school’s Center on Race, Inequality and the Law and the Guarini Center on Environmental, Energy and Land Use Law that was announced last April. The lab provides litigation support for local groups that have limited accessibility to a healthy living environment, clear air and water supply.

“For the last five to 10 years, students have been asking for an environmental justice initiative, for more environmental justice curriculum, for more opportunities to work in environmental justice,” program director Marianne Engelman-Lado said. “One of the exciting developments when I got here was that so many students wanted to be part of the lab and they’re so passionate.”

Engelman-Lado, a civil rights attorney who previously worked at the Environmental Protection Agency, said the lab is currently partnering with various environmental justice organizations that have faced “harassment and attack” as well as grant termination threats from the Trump administration. The initiative also facilitates data-driven policy advocacy, researching ways to mitigate the effects of racial bias and income discrimination on environmental contamination patterns.

The panel opened with remarks from law school Dean Troy McKenzie, who highlighted the lab’s  aim to tackle environmental inequity. It featured panelists Charles Lee and Vernice Miller-Travis, founders of the environmental justice movement and Abre’ Conner, director of the Center for Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP.

“I came to law school because I was interested in environmental justice and I wanted my career to be focused on community-based lawyering. This lab is really a hands-on way to learn how to do that,” Marshall Thomas, a second-year law student who serves at the clinic said. “I’m working with a community that is experiencing soil contamination from historic incinerators — so it’s been really cool to work directly on very tangible issues.”

EPA officials said the agency’s staff capacity had been reduced by almost 23% this past July, amid President Donald Trump’s broader cost-cutting measures. Two weeks into the government shutdown that first ensued on Oct. 1, a court filing stated that the government is expecting around 4,000 staff layoffs across several federal agencies, including the EPA.

“A lot of peer institutions have long had a focus on environmental law and environmental justice law,” Thomas said. For NYU to develop a program that’s in line with that, it’s really impactful.”

Contact Kaitlyn Sze Tu at [email protected].