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White House officials urge counties to use climate and economic justice screening tool when applying for federal grants
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Summary
White House officials demonstrated the Climate and Economic Justice Screening (CJIS) tool and urged counties to document equity impacts in grant applications, offering data and accountability guidance and pointing to grants already citing CJIS and Justice40 language.
Kylie Patterson, deputy assistant to the president on racial justice and equity at the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Dr. Natasha DeJarnett, deputy director for environmental justice data and evaluation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), told a California State Association of Counties webinar that counties should anticipate questions about equity and use the federal Climate and Economic Justice Screening (CJIS) tool when preparing grant applications.
"We all do better when we all do better," Patterson said, framing the Biden-Harris administration's equity agenda and telling county grant teams to document disparities, accountability, resources and executive sponsorship — an acronym she summarized as DARE (Data, Accountability, Resources, Executive sponsorship). Patterson cited research estimating large economic losses from unresolved opportunity gaps, noting the Federal Reserve's findings that those gaps cost the U.S. $2.6 trillion in forgone GDP in 2019 and could raise output by an additional $3.1 trillion by 2029 if closed.
Dr. DeJarnett described Version 1 of the CJIS, launched on 2022-11-22, as a geospatial tool agencies now use to identify disadvantaged census tracts for the Justice40 Initiative. "Version 1 of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening tool is a key step in delivering on the administration's environmental justice commitments," she said, adding that the tool identifies census tracts that meet burden-category thresholds for climate, health, legacy pollution, water and workforce indicators paired with socioeconomic measures. DeJarnett said version 1 identifies a little over 27,000 census tracts as disadvantaged.
DeJarnett said federal agencies have been instructed to use the CJIS "to the maximum extent permitted by law" when making new covered investments under interim Justice40 guidance, and that applicants are likely to see CJIS references in notices of funding opportunities on Grants.gov. She cited recent or open opportunities that include CJIS language: the Department of the Interior's WaterSmart Drought Resiliency Projects (closes October 2025), the Department of Energy's Solar Technologies Rapid Integration and Validation (Scribe) (closes in October), and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Environmental and Climate Justice Community Change Grants (closes in November).
During a live demo of screeningtool.geoplatform.gov, DeJarnett showed how users can search by city, county or landmark; view burden categories and associated socioeconomic indicators in the side panel; and download CJIS spreadsheets and shapefiles. She demonstrated examples where an area is identified as disadvantaged because of energy cost burdens or PM2.5 health indicators, and a tract near Rancho Mirage that is shown as partially disadvantaged because lands of a federally recognized tribe cover 63% of that tract.
Presenters pointed attendees to the CJIS methodology and instructions to agencies, technical support documents and an email for help (screeningtool-support@omb.eop.gov). CSAC and contractor staff (the Ferguson Group) emphasized that the tool and underlying data are updated periodically and encouraged counties to use CSAC office hours and resources to apply CJIS outputs in grant narratives.
The webinar was hosted by the California State Association of Counties; organizers asked participants to hold questions until the Q&A and said the session was recorded and that a CSAC DEIA report is available on the member portal. The presenters invited attendees to submit chat questions and offered to share contact and QR code details after the webinar.
