Amicus Brief: Athletics v. California Department of Toxic Substances Control

When metal recyclers shred old cars, appliances, and other products containing metal, they generate residue that can contain heavy metals like lead. This residue is so toxic that it meets the threshold for hazardous waste under California law. But for decades, California law had a loophole for metal shredding facilities, which gave them a free pass to generate hazardous waste without obeying the state’s commonsense protections to keep that waste from spreading into communities. Under-regulated and exposed to the elements, this hazardous waste blows into surrounding communities, contaminating the air, soil, and water, as well as our bodies. Metal shredder waste also has the potential to catch on fire, putting lives in immediate peril. Six metal shredders have operated under this legal loophole, and in a telling example of environmental racism, all six facilities are sited in frontline environmental justice communities.

Radius Recycling (formerly known as Schnitzer Steel), a metal shredder in Oakland, is the largest one of these facilities in California. Data show how Schnitzer Steel releases heavy metals such as lead, zinc, cadmium, and copper into its surroundings—all of which are known to irreversibly damage human health and the environment.

In 2014, after years of pressure from the frontline communities most at risk from metal shredder pollution, California passed a bill that directed the state's Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) to establish more protective hazardous waste management standards for metal shredding facilities. But the DTSC failed to implement the law, prompting a lawsuit by the Athletics, a Major League Baseball team formerly based in Oakland, which alleged that the state had failed to protect local communities from harmful pollution from Schnitzer Steel. The Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, Communities for a Better Environment, San Francisco Baykeeper, and NRDC filed an amicus brief^* in support of the Oakland Athletics’ position in January 2021, calling on the DTSC to properly regulate metal shredding facilities throughout the state.

In April 2021, in a resounding victory for environmental justice in California, the Superior Court ordered the DTSC to implement the 2014 law. The agency ended Schnitzer Steel’s special exemption from hazardous waste law shortly thereafter. Schnitzer Steel appealed that decision to the First Appellate District in California. The original amici, joined by additional amicus the Sierra Club, filed an amicus brief in the appellate court case in January 2022. Unfortunately, the appellate court reversed the trial court decision, and the California Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the appellate court’s decision.

The trial court allowed the Oakland Athletics to renew its lawsuit. The amici coalition, including additional partner organizations West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project and Peoples’ Collective for Environmental Justice, filed additional amicus briefs. In January 2026, the court declined to order DTSC to require Schnitzer to obtain a permit for untreated metal shredder waste, based on the continued application of OPP 88-6 (a nearly 40-year-old informal policy paper that created an exemption for “in-process” metal shredder waste that DTSC believes “must be rescinded”). At the same time, the court stated that if the agency were to require a hazardous waste facility permit of Schnitzer, “it is entirely possible that DTSC would be within its authority” to do so. The court admonished “[t]he problems of storing untreated metal shredder aggregate, including the periodic fires with dark smoke hanging over the Oakland waterfront…have got to remain the focus of attention,” and urged that the outdated OPP 88-6 policy paper is “a sideshow that should be dealt with swiftly.” 

No matter what happens next, NRDC will continue to seek ways to help push the DTSC to protect Californians from metal shredder pollution—once and for all. 

*An amicus curiae (or “friend of the court”) brief is filed by a nonparty to the case to assist the court by offering information or expertise that has bearing on the issues before the court.