In this article, I augment scholars’ explanations for why agencies’ environmental justice (EJ) programs often fail to meet EJ movement principles. Other scholars have shown that countermovement actors within the state and from industry have coopted EJ policy implementation by reframing ‘EJ’ away from activist principles. Drawing on insights from social movement theorists who have shown that social movement outcomes are shaped also by movements’ own internal struggles, I focus here on the cleavages among EJ activists and how those factions shape EJ policy implementation outcomes. I do so through an analysis of agencies’ EJ grant programs in the United States. I use agency documents to describe how most of the programs were implemented in problematic ways that deviate from long-standing EJ movement priorities, and I use qualitative interviews with movement leaders influential over other EJ advocates and agency EJ efforts to help explain those outcomes. I demonstrate that EJ policy implementation often deviates from long-standing EJ movement priorities not only because of cooptation by countermovement actors and other factors that scholars have rightly noted, but also because some leading EJ activists are reframing what EJ means in problematic ways and shaping agency EJ efforts to accord with that vision.