EKY legal advocate, Appalachian Citizens’ law firm founding director dead at 74
One of the founders of a nonprofit law firm in Eastern Kentucky dedicated to protecting coal miners, their families and the rural Appalachian landscape from extractive industries like coal mines has died.
Steve Sanders, 74, founding director of the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg died Jan. 10 in Lexington. He retired from ACLC in 2018 after serving as the center’s director for 17 years.
Sanders and two other lawyers launched the nonprofit legal firm in 2002 to represent coal miners affected by black lung, as the disease rebounded in central Appalachia.
The incurable disease is caused by breathing coal and rock dust produced during mining. It impairs a person’s ability to breathe and can lead to premature death. Federal rules drove down its prevalence from 1969 to the late 1990s, but researchers began seeing more cases in the early 2000s as miners worked longer shifts, companies sought thinner, dustier coal seams and some companies skirted the rules.
Under Sanders leadership, the ACLC expanded its mission for miners’ health and safety to include mine land reclamation, clean water and affordable utilities and climate resilience.
“He touched so many lives throughout his legal career,” the ACLC said in a statement. “He had incredible compassion for each of his clients; each story, each person, was meaningful to him.”
Born in 1951 in Cincinnati, Sanders attended the University of Cincinnati and visited Eastern Kentucky with his sister and other students at the University of Dayton Appalachia Club. He volunteered at the David School in Floyd County, where he worked before he began law school at Vanderbilt University.
While studying law, Sanders became involved with the St. Vincent Mission in David and the Appalachian Research and Defense Fund (AppalReD), a legal aid organization in Prestonsburg. He interned there as a law student and later joined the permanent legal staff in 1978.
At AppalReD, Sanders work remained dedicated to the environment, education and unemployment in Eastern Kentucky, but he developed an expertise in defending coal miners with black lung. After serving at the firm for 25 years, he helped launch the ACLC in Prestonsburg and maintained a small staff whose focus remained mine safety and black-lung disability cases.
He and his family moved to Lexington in 2007, and he relocated the ACLC to Whitesburg, where he commuted once a week. From 2009 to 2012, Sanders served as commissioner of the Kentucky Mine Safety Review Commission. He was named the Vanderbilt Law School Social Justice Fellow in 2015.
Sanders suffered a seizure late last month as a result of cancer, according to his obituary. He spent his final days at Baptist Hospital in Lexington, surrounded by family and friends.
“Everything Steve did was based in love and showed his incredible dedication to his family, his faith, and his sense of service, as well as his incredible optimism and curiosity about the world,” the ACLC wrote.
