

Silicosis is typically caused by years of breathing in silica dust at work, and can worsen even after work exposures stop. In recent years, after decades of inaction, the federal government finally took several important steps to reduce the incidence of this ancient and debilitating disease. Under the Trump administration, all that progress is going away, in but one example of the widespread destruction now taking place across the federal government.
Silicosis first caught the attention of the federal government in the early 1930s, when hundreds of workers hired by the chemical company Union Carbide and its subsidiary to drill a tunnel through a mountain of almost pure silica died of silicosis. Most of the workers were Black, and many were buried in unmarked graves. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, Frances Perkins, issued a report on the widespread problem across factories and mines, informing businesses that control measures, “if conscientiously adopted and applied,” could prevent silicosis.
Pedantry warning, but I think this distinction is useful: The phrase “civil crime” doesn’t really exist. You can have a crime, you can have a civil case, or you can have both; but they are separate things.
Criminal court is where the government prosecutes someone for allegedly breaking the law (committing a crime). A pardon wipes out the government-imposed consequences of that crime.
Civil court is for legal disputes between parties. It’s not about punishing crimes but about one party seeking restitution from another. Sometimes that stems from a crime, but the civil case stands on its own.
So even if a crime is pardoned, the door stays open for civil lawsuits over the same event. (This is repeating your point. My beef was just the “civil crimes” phrase!)