November, 20 2015, 09:00am EDT

For Immediate Release
Contact:
Andrea Rodgers, Attorney for Plaintiffs, 206-696-2851,rodgers@westernlaw.org
Julia Olson, Our Children’s Trust, 415-786-4825,julia@ourchildrenstrust.org
In Advance of Paris Climate Talks, Washington Court Recognizes Constitutional and Public Trust Rights and Announces Agency's Legal Duty to Protect Atmosphere for Present and Future Generations
“[I]f ever there were a time to recognize through action this right to preservation of a healthful and pleasant atmosphere, the time is now”
SEATTLE, Washington
Late last night, King County Superior Court Judge Hollis R. Hill issued a groundbreaking ruling in the unprecedented case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come.
In a landmark decision, Judge Hill declared "[the youths'] very survival depends upon the will of their elders to act now, decisively and unequivocally, to stem the tide of global warming...before doing so becomes first too costly and then too late." Highlighting inextricable relationships between navigable waters and the atmosphere, and finding that separating the two is "nonsensical," the judge found the public trust doctrine mandates that the state act through its designated agency "to protect what it holds in trust." The court confirmed what the Washington youths and youths across the nation have been arguing in courts of law, that "[t]he state has a constitutional obligation to protect the public's interest in natural resources held in trust for the common benefit of the people."
"It's incredible to have the court finally say that we do have a right to a healthy atmosphere and that our government can't allow it to be harmed," said 13-year-old petitioner Gabriel Mandell. "This ruling means that what the Department of Ecology does going forward in its rulemaking has to protect us, the kids of Washington, and not just us, but future generations too, like my children and those to come. Now they can't decide to protect short-term economic fears and ignore us because we have constitutional and public trust rights to a stable climate!"
The court validated the youths' claims that the "scientific evidence is clear that the current rates of reduction mandated by Washington law...cannot ensure the survival of an environment in which [youth] can grow to adulthood safely." The judge determined that the state has a "mandatory duty" to "preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations," and found the state's current standards to fail that standard dramatically for several reasons.
The judge continued, writing that "current scientific evidence establishes that rapidly increasing global warming causes an unprecedented risk to the earth, including land, sea, the atmosphere and all living plants and creatures."
The youth petitioners first requested the state initiate greenhouse gas rulemaking procedures in June 2014. The state refused to do so in August of the same year. The youth appealed that refusal last September, and in a June 2015 decision highlighting the urgency of the climate crisis, the judge ordered the state to reconsider the youth's petition taking into account current climate science. Then, in July 2015, the youth plaintiffs met with Gov. Inslee to plead their case personally. Just 11 days later, Gov. Inslee ordered the Department of Ecology to institute greenhouse gas rulemaking, as the youth had requested for more than a year. In August 2015, Ecology again refused the youths' request for a science-based rulemaking because they had initiated similar rulemaking at Gov. Inslee's request. Because Ecology also rejected the youths' constitutional and public trust rights, the case, resulting in this decision, was argued in front of Judge Hollis Hill on November 3, 2015.
"In this important ruling, Judge Hill has made it very clear what Ecology must do when promulgating the Clean Air Rule: preserve, protect and enhance air quality for present and future generations and uphold the constitutional rights of these young people," said Western Environmental Law Center Attorney Andrea Rodgers. "We will hold Ecology accountable every step of the way to make sure that Judge Hill's powerful words are put into action. This is a huge victory for our children and for the climate movement. To Gov. Inslee, we hope you take this message with you to Paris and heed Judge Hill's finding that 'if ever there were a time to recognize through action this right to preservation of a healthful and pleasant environment, the time is now.'"
This case is one of several similar state and international cases, all supported by Our Children's Trust, seeking the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. Cases brought by youth to protect the atmosphere are pending before trial judges in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, and before appellate courts in Massachusetts and Oregon.
Significantly, similar legal issues are being considered in a federal lawsuit brought in August 2015 against the federal government by 21 young people from across the U.S. and Dr. James Hansen as guardian for all future generations, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Just last week in that case, the world's largest fossil fuel industry representatives filed a request to intervene to protect their commercial economic interests in fossil fuel exploitation and to thwart the youth's request for protection of their fundamental constitutional rights. The proposed intervenors, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (representing members Exxon Mobil, BP, Shell, Koch Industries, and virtually all other major refiners and petrochemical manufacturers), the American Petroleum Institute (representing 625 oil and natural gas companies), and the National Association of Manufacturers, called the youth's case "a direct threat to [their] businesses."
Julia Olson, executive director of Our Children's Trust said "this Washington decision establishing constitutional public trust protections for the atmosphere, together with the decision earlier this year doing the same in New Mexico, evidences a wake-up by the judiciary that our collective right to a habitable future is at stake and must be protected by the courts before it is too late. Judge Hill did not mince words on the need for science-based climate action now."
A copy of the November 19 decision is available here.
A more detailed history of the case is available here.
WELC's Web page with more information about the case is here.
The Western Environmental Law Center uses the power of the law to safeguard the public lands, wildlife, and communities of the American West in the face of a changing climate. We envision a thriving, resilient West, abundant with protected public lands and wildlife, powered by clean energy, and defended by communities rooted in an ethic of conservation.
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400+ Immigrant Rights Groups Demand Biden Take Action to Preserve TPS
While "the North Star is always citizenship" for immigrant rights groups, "this program is now the relief that the president can offer," said one advocate.
Sep 11, 2023
More than 400 immigrant rights and civil society groups on Monday wrote to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas to call on the Biden administration to redesignate people from six countries for Temporary Protected Status, warning that the safety of as many as 2 million people hang in the balance as the White House has said it is up to Congress to pass comprehensive reform to protect asylum-seekers and undocumented immigrants.
Organizations including the ACLU, CASA, and the National Immigration Law Center noted that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in June extended the TPS designations of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Nepal as it rescinded the Trump administration's termination of protections for people from those countries.
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The groups also urged DHS to redesignate Venezuela as a TPS country and to designate people from Guatemala as protected under the program for the first time.
Last week, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus also called on the administration to redesignate the Ramos countries as qualifying for TPS.
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The letter was sent less than a week after more than 30 mayors and county executives from across the U.S. wrote to Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, calling on them to redesignate TPS for Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cameroon, and Nepal and to give initial designation to Guatemala, Mali, Congo, Mauritania, and Nigeria.
"As city and county leaders, the safety and well-being of our residents is of utmost importance," wrote the local leaders, including Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. "We recognize that TPS is one way the Biden-Harris administration can protect many well-established residents with deep ties to our communities through their families, jobs, and homes as well as help newer arrivals establish themselves and find economic independence."
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"We come here seeking urgent help, in the strong belief that international law is an essential mechanism for correcting the manifest injustice that our people are suffering as a result of climate change," Tuvalu's Prime Minister Kausea Natano said in a statement shared by Eureporter. "We are confident that international courts and tribunals will not allow this injustice to continue unchecked."
The 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea governs the shared use and protection of the ocean. A total of 168 countries—the U.S. not among them—have ratified it.
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"A positive advisory opinion could be essential to the global fight against climate change."
The island nations—organized as the Commission of Small Island States on Climate Change and International Law (COSIS)—first requested an advisory opinion from the tribunal in December 2022. COSIS formed in 2021 during the COP26 U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland, and its members include Antigua and Barbuda, Tuvalu, Palau, Niue, Vanuatu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and the Bahamas, according to ClientEarth.
These nations say they have only contributed 1% of global greenhouse gas emissions but contend with disproportionate climate impacts, from sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion to coastal erosion, The New York Times reported.
"Despite our negligible emission of greenhouse gases, COSIS's members have suffered and continue to suffer the overwhelming burden of climate change's adverse impacts," Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Alfonso Browne said in a statement shared by Eureporter."Without rapid and ambitious action, climate change may prevent my children and grandchildren from living on the island of their ancestors, the island that we call home. We cannot remain silent in the face of such injustice."
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While COSIS is only asking for an advisory opinion for now, legal experts say the decision could have a major impact on climate litigation going forward, especially if ITLOS rules that signatories do have an obligation to protect the ocean from climate pollution.
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"A positive advisory opinion could be essential to the global fight against climate change," the group wrote. "A legal interpretation by the tribunal that the Law of the Sea requires states all over the world mitigate their greenhouse gas emissions to prevent harm to the marine environment opens up the possibility that climate commitments such as those made under the Paris agreement may need to be enforced to protect the world's oceans."
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Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's efforts to challenge corporate consolidation across the U.S. economy—from
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And now, according to the Financial Times, some of the Democratic Party's Wall Street donors are privately calling on President Joe Biden to fire Khan if he wins reelection in 2024.
"Anybody talking to dealmakers over the past year or so will have noticed that barely anyone has been capable of hiding their loathing for Khan," wrote FT's James Fontanella-Khan. "In private, financiers accuse her of being anti-American and against business. Several Wall Street donors to the Democratic Party are using their position of influence to quietly lobby Biden to drop Khan if he gets reelected, according to people briefed on the matter. That's how badly they want her out of the FTC."
Wall Street spent over $74 million in support of Biden in 2020 and industry executives—at the urging of the president's team—have hosted fundraisers this year for his reelection campaign.
Under Khan's leadership, the FTC has taken legal action against several prominent merger proposals—including Microsoft's $69 billion deal to acquire Activision Blizzard, a case the agency paused after recent court defeats. The FTC has also helped rewrite pro-consolidation merger guidelines that were established during the Reagan era, launched a probe into Big Tech's cloud computing businesses, and proposed a ban on exploitative non-compete agreements.
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The Khan-led FTC's proactive approach to taking on entrenched power that has worsened inequality and harmed workers has predictably angered corporate America and its GOP allies in Congress, who used a recent hearing to attack Khan as a "bully."
Some of the Republican Party's most outspoken critics of Khan are funded by Big Tech.
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FT's James Fontanella-Khan argued that the widespread "animus" toward Khan in corporate America "might indicate she is having an impact despite the setbacks."
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