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juliana v. united states
'We Will Appeal': Judge Dismisses Youth Suit Against Trump Attacks on Climate
"Courts cannot offer more protection to fossil fuel companies seeking to preserve their profits than to young Americans seeking to preserve their rights," said the plaintiffs' lead attorney.
Oct 16, 2025
American children and young adults suing over President Donald Trump's anti-climate executive orders plan to keep fighting after a federal judge on Wednesday dismissed their case, citing a previous decision from the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
Eva Lighthiser, Rikki Held—of the historic Held v. State of Montana case—and 20 other young people filed a federal suit in Montana in May, taking aim at Trump's executive orders (EOs) declaring a "national energy emergency," directing federal agencies to "unleash" American energy by accelerating fossil fuel development, and boosting the coal industry.
"The founders of this country believed our rights to life and liberty were the fundamental tenets of a reasoned and just society, among the most sacred of rights to protect from government intrusion and overreach," said Daniel C. Snyder, director of the Environmental Enforcement Project at Public Justice, one of the groups representing the young plaintiffs.
"Not only should Americans be outraged by unlawful executive actions that trample upon those rights, but also because the harm these executive orders have inflicted was acknowledged by the court—showing the serious nature of plaintiffs' case," Snyder continued. "Allowing the burning of fossil fuels to continue will eventually render our nation unlivable for future generations."
"Allowing the burning of fossil fuels to continue will eventually render our nation unlivable for future generations."
US District Judge Dana Christensen "reluctantly" dismissed Lighthiser v. Trump on Wednesday, pointing to the 9th Circuit's 2020 opinion in Juliana v. United States, a constitutional climate case that the US Supreme Court effectively ended in March.
"Plaintiffs have presented overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels," wrote Christensen. "The record further demonstrates that climate change and the exposure from fossil fuels presents a children's health emergency."
The appointee of former President Barack Obama also said that he was "troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change and the challenged EOs' effect on carbon dioxide emissions." Specifically, he noted, "plaintiffs have shown the challenged EOs will generate an additional 205 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2027, an increase which plaintiffs convincingly allege will expose them to imminent, increased harm from a warming climate."
While Adam Gustafson, acting assistant attorney general of the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the US Department of Justice, cheered the dismissal of what he called "a sweeping and baseless attack on President Trump's energy agenda," the judge wrote that "if the 9th Circuit disagrees" with his decision, he "welcomes the return of this case to decide it on the merits."
Lawyers for the youth plaintiffs have already set their sights on the higher court. Lead attorney Julia Olson of Our Children's Trust stressed that "Judge Christensen said he reached his decision reluctantly and invited the 9th Circuit to correct him so these young Americans can have their case heard—and the 9th Circuit should do just that."
"Every day these executive orders remain in effect, these 22 young Americans suffer irreparable harm to their health, safety, and future," she noted. "The judge recognized that the government's fossil fuel directives are injuring these youth, but said his hands were tied by precedent."
"We will appeal—because courts cannot offer more protection to fossil fuel companies seeking to preserve their profits than to young Americans seeking to preserve their rights," Olson added. "This violates not only the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, but the most basic principles of justice."
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Juliana v. US: Supreme Court Decision Brings 10-Year Climate Case to an End
While the decision was disappointing for those involved with the case, they highlighted that "Juliana sparked a global youth-led movement for climate rights that continues to grow."
Mar 24, 2025
Although young plaintiffs and their supporters were disappointed by the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ending their constitutional climate lawsuit on Monday, they also emphasized the positive and far-reaching impacts of Juliana v. United States over the past decade.
First filed by 21 youth plaintiffs in 2015, Juliana aimed to hold the federal government accountable for its contributions to the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. Over the years, the effort garnered support from more than 100 members of Congress, over 400 groups, and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. In September, plaintiffs asked the justices to reverse an appellate court's dismissal of the case—but the country's highest court on Monday denied a petition for certiorari.
"The Supreme Court's decision today is not the end of the road and the impact of Juliana cannot be measured by the finality of this case alone," Julia Olson, chief legal counsel of Our Children's Trust, which represented the plaintiffs, said in a statement. "Juliana sparked a global youth-led movement for climate rights that continues to grow. It has empowered young people to demand their constitutional right to a safe climate and future."
"For almost 10 years, we've stood up for the rights of present and future generations, demanding a world where we can not only survive, but thrive."
Juliana plaintiff Miko Vergun—who was born in the Marshall Islands, a country in the Pacific on the frontlines of the climate crisis—similarly said that "ultimately, we didn't get the decision we wanted today, but we've had many wins along the way."
"For almost 10 years, we've stood up for the rights of present and future generations, demanding a world where we can not only survive, but thrive," she said. "We've faced extreme resistance by the federal government, yet we've never wavered in our resolve. All great movements have faced obstacles, but what sets them apart is the perseverance of the people behind them. We've shown the world that young people will not be ignored, and I'm incredibly proud of the impact Juliana v. United States has made."
For example, in August 2023, Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seeley sided with young plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana, finding that the state's environmental policy law violates the Montana Constitution, which guarantees residents a "clean and healthful environment." The state Supreme Court upheld that decision in December.
"Juliana, through the unwavering dedication of its plaintiffs and legal team, has left an indelible mark on the landscape of climate litigation, paving the way for lawsuits like Held v. State of Montana," Rikki Held, lead plaintiff in that case, said Monday. "I am inspired by the courage and determination of the young people who have led this case, and I hope their legacy continues to motivate others to hold our governments and leaders accountable for the actions that worsen the climate crisis, impacting our homes, our lives, and our futures."
Our Children's Trust represented plaintiffs in Held—the first youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit in U.S. history to go to trial and win—as well as Navahine v. Hawaii Department of Transportation, which wrapped up with a settlement last year.
"Last June, my lawsuit—Navahine v. Hawaii Department of Transportation—achieved the first settlement in a constitutional climate case, securing the systemic decarbonization of a state transportation system. This historic moment would not have been possible without the blueprint laid by the Juliana youth plaintiffs," plaintiff Mesina D. said Monday.
"They took on the most powerful government in the world, and their resilience and perseverance showed us that it's possible to stand up for what's right and demand justice, even in the face of overwhelming odds," she continued. "Thanks to these 21 Americans, young people everywhere now know they can raise their voices and demand the protection of their constitutional rights to life and liberty."
Looking ahead, Olson said that "we've already secured important victories, and we will continue pushing forward. This fight is far from over. These claims will be heard, evidence will be presented, and the federal government will be held accountable. The Juliana plaintiffs started this fight for justice, and others will carry it forward."
"This is a call to all young people who want to stand up to those in the executive office of the president who would silence you and threaten your health and safety—join us in protecting your constitutional rights," she continued, nodding to Republican President Donald Trump's support for fossil fuels and the industry's assault on the global climate.
"Juliana has ignited a movement and created a powerful legal framework for future generations to assert their constitutional rights in the face of the climate crisis," she concluded. "Our Children's Trust remains committed to working with young people to hold their government accountable and we will see the federal government back in federal court very soon."
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43 Lawmakers Back Youth in Climate Case Against US Government
A 17-year-old plaintiff commended the federal lawmakers for "using their voices to weigh in on the importance of our rights to access justice and to a livable climate."
Jan 13, 2025
Dozens of members of Congress on Monday submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court supporting 21 youth plaintiffs who launched a historic constitutional climate case against the federal government nearly a decade ago.
Since Juliana v. United States was first filed in the District of Oregon in August 2015, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have fought against it. Last May, a panel of three judges appointed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by President-elect Donald Trump granted a request by President Joe Biden's Department of Justice to dismiss the case.
After the U.S. Supreme Court in November denied the youth plaintiffs' initial request for intervention regarding the panel's decision, their attorneys filed a different type of petition last month. As Our Children's Trust, which represents the 21 young people, explains on its website, they argued to the justices that federal courts are empowered by the U.S. Constitution and the Declaratory Judgment Act (DJA) "to resolve active disputes between citizens and their government when citizens are being personally injured by government policies, even if the relief is limited to a declaration of individual rights and government wrongs."
The Monday filing from seven U.S. senators and 36 members of the House of Representatives argues to the nation's top court that "the 9th Circuit's dismissal of the petitioners' constitutional suit for declaratory relief has no basis in law and threatens to undermine the Declaratory Judgment Act, one of the most consequential remedial statutes that Congress has ever enacted."
The Supreme Court "should grant the petition to clarify that declaratory relief under the DJA satisfies the Article III redressability requirement," wrote the federal lawmakers, led by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.). "Doing so is necessary because Congress expressly authorized declaratory relief 'whether or not further relief is or could be sought.'"
"The 9th Circuit's jurisdictional holding, which prevented the district court from even reaching the question whether declaratory relief would be appropriate, conflicts with this court's holding that the DJA is constitutional," the lawmakers continued. "It also conflicts with this court's holding that Article III courts may not limit DJA relief to cases where an injunction would be appropriate."
In a Monday statement, Juliana's youngest plaintiff, 17-year-old Levi D., welcomed the support from the 43 members of Congress—including Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as well as Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
"After 10 years of delay, I have spent more than half of my life as a plaintiff fighting for my fundamental rights to a safe climate. Yet, the courthouse doors are still closed to us," said Levi. "Five years ago, members of Congress stood by me and my co-plaintiffs on the steps of the Supreme Court. Today, as the climate crisis worsens and hurricanes ravage my home state of Florida, they are still with us, using their voices to weigh in on the importance of our rights to access justice and to a livable climate."
"The recent win in Held v. State of Montana and historic settlement in Navahine v. Hawaii Department of Transportation showed the world that young people's voices, my voice, and legal action are not just symbolic, but they hold governments accountable to protect our constitutional rights," Levi added. "Now, it's our turn to be heard!"
The lawmakers weren't alone in formally supporting the young climate advocates on Monday. Public Justice and the Montana Trial Lawyers Association filed another brief that takes aim at the government's use of mandamus—a court order directing a lower entity to perform official duties—to deny the Juliana youth a trial.
"The government's sole argument to justify mandamus is the Department of Justice's past and anticipated future litigation expenses associated with going to trial. That argument is firmly foreclosed by precedent," the groups argued. "And even if it wasn't foreclosed by precedent, the argument trivializes the extraordinary nature of mandamus and would improperly circumvent the final judgment rule."
The organizations urged the high court to grant certiorari to uphold the mandamus standard set out in Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia in 2004. Plaintiff Miko V. said Monday that "I'm incredibly grateful to Public Justice and the Montana Trial Lawyers Association for standing with us in our fight for justice."
"We're not asking for special treatment; we're demanding the right to access justice, as our constitutional democracy guarantees," Miko stressed. "The recent victory in Held v. State of Montana demonstrates the power of youth-led legal action, and the urgent need for courts to recognize that our generation has the right to hold our government accountable. Every day that the government prevents us from presenting our case, we all lose more ground in the fight for a livable future. It's time for the judiciary to open the courthouse doors and allow us a fair trial."
The briefs came just a week before Big Oil-backed Trump's second inauguration and on the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected attempts by fossil fuel giants to quash a Hawaiian municipality's lawsuit that aims to hold the climate polluters accountable, in line with justices' previous decisions. Dozens of U.S. state and local governments have filed similar suits.
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Juliana Plaintiffs Urge Supreme Court to Reverse Trump Judges' Dismissal of Key Climate Case
"This case is about addressing the climate crisis and protecting our fundamental rights like our right to life and freedom. However, it is also about ensuring access to justice," said one plaintiff.
Sep 12, 2024
Demanding that the U.S. Supreme Court correct "an egregious error" by the Trump-appointed judges who dismissed their landmark case in May, the 21 plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States on Thursday filed a petition asking the high court to take action that would require the lower judicial panel to "follow the rule of law and precedent."
The petition was announced by Our Children's Trust, the legal group that has represented the Juliana plaintiffs for nearly a decade since they filed their lawsuit asserting that the government's support for fossil fuel extraction and other actions have "violated the youngest generation's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources."
The group asked the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus—a legal tool which can be used to "confine an inferior court to a lawful exercise of prescribed jurisdiction, or when there is an usurpation of judicial power," according to the Department of Justice.
The maneuver is the same one that was used repeatedly by the DOJ under three different presidents since Juliana was first filed in 2015, with the Biden administration successfully dismissing the case this year.
By adhering to the DOJ's writ of mandamus and blocking a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken, who late last year had decided in favor of giving the plaintiffs a court trial, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel "did not follow the rule of law and precedent, and flagrantly disregarded the limits Congress and the Supreme Court placed on its jurisdiction," said Our Children's Trust on Thursday.
"Today, I'm asking the Supreme Court to correct the 9th Circuit's abuse of the rules meant to protect our ability as young citizens to bring cases against our government. The rule of law and our constitutional democracy depend on it," said one plaintiff named Avery. "If you care about justice, fundamental rights, and the preservation of our democracy, you care about Juliana. This case is about addressing the climate crisis and protecting our fundamental rights like our right to life and freedom. However, it is also about ensuring access to justice. I urge the Supreme Court to make a decision that will make their children, grandchildren, and all future generations proud. Let us go to trial."
Our Children's Trust noted that the panel of judges appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump attempted to "obscure" their ruling in May "by issuing a brief, unpublished order."
"Such actions undermine the integrity of the judiciary and threaten the fairness of the legal process for citizen litigants who are not wielding the power of the federal government's resources," the group said.
The 9th Circuit ruling also disregarded the Supreme Court's mandatory conditions for a writ of mandamus, which can only be granted if there is no other way to get relief from a "significant harm" caused by a lower court and if the right to relief is "clear and indisputable."
"The DOJ's petition did not even address or come close to meeting these criteria," said Our Children's Trust.
The group noted that the federal government's efforts to block a case in which young people are claiming the right to be protected from planetary heating and from diseases and premature death caused by pollution from fossil fuel infrastructure have gone on so long that the case's youngest plaintiff, who was eight when Juliana was filed, "can now drive and has spent more than half his life as a plaintiff waiting for trial in the face of the most aggressive litigation tactics ever to come out of the Department of Justice."
In federal civil cases that go to trial, a trial begins an average of 27 months from the case's first filing. Juliana was filed 109 months ago.
The writ of mandamus petition is necessary to correct the 9th Circuit's "overreach," said chief legal counsel Julia Olson. "Upholding these principles of fair process is vital for maintaining trust in our judicial system, regardless of what the justices may think about the merits of the case."
The petition was filed a day after Our Children's Trust sent a letter to the Biden administration asking officials to engage in meaningful settlement talks. Nearly 350,000 people signed petitions asking the administration to meet the demand, and the signatures were delivered Wednesday by 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and Jerome Foster II, the youngest ever White House environmental justice adviser.
"Our ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution harming our planet and our children are fundamental freedoms we risk losing," said McKibben, calling on the Biden administration to take the opportunity "to show [its] commitment to climate action, to youth, and to the future!"
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'Tragic and Unjust': Trump Judges Grant Biden DOJ Request to Toss Youth Climate Case
"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
May 02, 2024
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
"I have been pleading for my government to hear our case since I was 10 years old, and I am now nearly 19," said McRae. "A functioning democracy would not make a child beg for their rights to be protected in the courts, just to be ignored nearly a decade later. I am fed up with the continuous attempts to squash this case and silence our voices."
Another plaintiff, Nathan Baring, said that "we will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
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Youth Fight Back as Biden DOJ Seeks to Derail Historic Climate Case
"These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs."
Feb 02, 2024
As the Biden administration seeks to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government, plaintiffs in the suit—some of them now in their mid-to-late 20s—on Thursday moved to block the Department of Justice from further delaying the case.
Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States filed a challenge to the Biden administration's bid for a stay in the case, calling the Justice Department's latest petition for a writ of mandamus "nothing short of shocking."
The DOJ's Justice Manual "provides that a writ of mandamus is an 'extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance,' the plaintiffs' filing notes. "The only emergency in this case is the climate emergency that defendants created and the Department of Justice prolongs with further delays."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—a longtime backer of the plaintiffs—filed a declaration supporting their motion. Lambasting the DOJ's claim that the agency is "irreparably harmed" by having to dedicate human and financial resources to the trial, Stiglitz wrote that "to suggest the harm to children's health and homes and constitutional rights is worth less than the money the government has to spend to litigate a case is to suggest every case could be stayed only because it cost taxpayer dollars to litigate."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018 and through the end of 2023, along with any projections of the range of harm going forward," Stiglitz added, "as well as the amount the U.S. has spent (and continues to spend) subsidizing the fossil fuel industry."
Originally filed in 2015 when the plaintiffs were between 8 and 19 years old, Juliana v. United States accuses the federal government of violating young people's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and argues that its actions contributing to the planetary emergency constitute a failure to protect essential public trust resources.
The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all worked to kill the case, delaying trial by years. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the case from going to trial days before it was set to begin. On December 29, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial, which was set to begin January 19. However, on January 18 the DOJ said it would file for a writ of mandamus.
The incessant delays have been accompanied by what the plaintiffs describe as "the most aggressive and discriminatory legal tactics" used against them by the government.
As the plaintiffs' latest filing explains:
These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs, in an effort to stop our nation's youth from taking the witness stand, when every court to review the Juliana plaintiffs' claims has said that there is life and death at stake, the survival of the nation is at stake, and there is merit to their constitutional claims. All they seek after trial is a declaratory judgment of their rights and the government's wrongs, just as the students in Brown v. Board of Education did 70 years ago.
As Stiglitz concluded in his motion, "The federal government has expended taxpayer money taking the case up on appeal, rather
than allowing it to go to trial."
"The amount of time and money spent over the past six years seeking early appeals and mandamus has been large," he added. "We have already laid out the magnitude of the damages to the youth plaintiffs, their generation, and the public. In economic terms, and for the health of the nation, the balancing of potential harms is clear: This case should finally be decided at trial without further delay."
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'Earth Needs Our Help': California Kids Sue EPA Over Climate Pollution
"We're challenging the EPA's failure to protect us. The air we breathe has become a casualty of their opposition."
Dec 11, 2023
As the United Nations climate talks cast a spotlight on the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, the U.S. law firm Our Children's Trust on Sunday launched a constitutional lawsuit against the Biden administration on behalf of 18 California children "growing up with polluted air and a government-imposed and -sanctioned climate crisis."
Filed in the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, the complaint takes aim at the federal government, the Environmental Protection Agency, and its administrator, Michael Regan, arguing that the "EPA's conduct in controlling the pollution that enters the nation's air actively discriminates against children, and these plaintiffs, knowingly causing them disproportionate harm compared to similarly situated adults and burdening them with a lifetime of hardship."
Avroh, a 14-year-old plaintiff, said in a statement Monday that "we are experiencing what no one should have to experience. We're facing constitutional negligence. We're challenging the EPA's failure to protect us. The air we breathe has become a casualty of their opposition."
Another plaintiff, 8-year-old Neela, said that "I believe kids can make a difference and the Earth needs our help. I want to help protect the people and places I love. I'm excited to be a part of this case and be a voice for all kids who deserve a healthy environment."
"We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us no one is moving fast enough."
Catherine Smith, of counsel to Our Children's Trust—which secured a landmark victory while representing Montana youth in state court earlier this year—argued that "in times like this, when the legislative and executive branches have breached their obligation to young people by intentionally allowing climate pollution and explicitly discounting children's lives in some political or economic calculus fully aware of its consequences to youth, courts must serve as a constitutional backstop to end it."
The plaintiffs—who are ages 8-17—are seeking "a declaratory judgment that as children they are entitled to a heightened level of
judicial review over government conduct that burdens them with lifetimes of hardship, that they are members of a constitutionally protected class, and that defendants have violated their constitutional rights," according to the complaint.
"They also seek declaratory relief that defendants have infringed their fundamental rights to life, including their personal security and happiness, and in so doing have also acted outside the scope of their delegated authority," the filing adds. "Plaintiffs seek further relief as deemed necessary and proper to enforce a declaratory judgment after the facts are found and the legal conclusions of the district court are rendered on a full evidentiary record."
Noah, a 15-year-old plaintiff, warned that "time is slipping away, and the impact of the climate crisis is already hitting us directly. We are running from wildfires, being displaced by floods, panicking in hot classrooms during another heatwave."
"We feel a constant worry about the future, and all around us no one is moving fast enough," Noah noted. "The Constitution guarantees every American the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness including and especially children."
Our Children’s Trust chief legal counsel Julia Olson declared that "these children are rising up from fire, smoke, heat, and flood to share their stories of physical harm and despair, along with their clarion call to adults—'our equal rights to life matter as much as yours.'"
"There is one federal agency explicitly tasked with keeping the air clean and controlling pollution to protect the health of every child and the welfare of a nation—the EPA," she continued. "The agency has done the opposite when it comes to climate pollution and it's time the EPA is held accountable by our courts for violating the U.S. Constitution and misappropriating its congressionally delegated authority."
In addition to representing youth plaintiffs in Held v. State of Montana—which the state is now appealing—Our Children's Trust is the group behind Juliana v. United States, the constitutional climate lawsuit first filed on behalf of 21 young people in 2015. While a June ruling put Juliana on track to proceed to trial, the Biden administration continues its battle to quash the case.
E&E News reported Monday that "while Juliana targets a swath of government agencies," the new case, Genesis B. v. EPA, singles out one agency. Our Children's Trust senior staff attorney Andrea Rodgers explained that the firm hopes the focus will mean that the EPA "won't fight this case" in the way that the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have targeted Juliana.
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Big Win for Climate Youth in Big Sky Country
We must give credit to the young people who are pushing President Biden, the courts, and Congress to ensure that we all have a future worth living for.
Sep 14, 2023
The wording in Article IX, Section 1, of Montana’s constitution couldn’t be clearer: “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.” Accordingly, in April, a district court judge in Yellowstone County voided a permit for a natural-gas-fired power plant under construction there. Over its lifetime, it would have released an estimated 23 million tons of planet-roasting carbon dioxide and that, ruled the judge, was incompatible with a “clean and healthful environment” in Montana or, for that matter, anywhere else.
Within a week, the state legislature had voted to reinforce a 2011 law barring the consideration of climate change in policymaking and so allowing the construction of the power plant to resume. But that wasn’t the end of the matter. Last month, the lawmakers were slapped down a second time when another district judge ruled in favor of a group of 16 youthful Montanans in a suit filed in 2020 seeking to strike down that very 2011 anti-climate legislation.
In her ruling, Judge Kathy Seeley wrote, “Montana’s climate, environment, and natural resources are unconstitutionally degraded and depleted due to the current atmospheric concentration of [greenhouse gases] and climate change.” She added that “every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.” The state, she made it abundantly clear, is obligated to correct such a situation.
In court, the young plaintiffs expressed deep concern not only for their own health and well-being but for those of their potential children and grandchildren. What kind of future will they and their kids face?
The plaintiffs, who were all in their teens or younger when their suit, Held v. Montana, was filed three years ago, are represented by a nonprofit group, Our Children’s Trust. Since 2011, it has been pursuing climate action on behalf of this country’s youth in the courts of all 50 states. The Montana case was simply the first to go to trial. The second, a climate case against the Hawaii Department of Transportation, is scheduled to begin next summer.
Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican serving in the House of Representatives, responded to the Held v. Montana decision with the worst sort of condescending bluster. “This is not a school project,” he insisted. “It’s a courtroom… Judge Seeley did a huge disservice to the courts and to these youths by allowing them to be used as pawns in the Left’s poorly thought-out plan to ruin our power grid and compromise our national security in the name of their Green New Fantasy.”
The only fantasy, however, was Rosendale’s characterization of the proceedings. The plaintiffs’ case was overwhelmingly persuasive, with extensive testimony from climate and pediatric health experts showing that people younger than 25 were going to be especially vulnerable to the many impacts climate change is going to have on physical and psychological health. In her ruling, Seeley summarized some of the damages to which the plaintiffs had testified.
All of the young people in the suit were afflicted with allergies and asthma (three especially severely) and had suffered significant health problems thanks to the unavoidable inhalation of smoke from North America’s ever-increasing wildfires. Much of that damage had occurred during Montana’s horrendous fire seasons of 2017 (when more than 2,400 fires burned across 1.4 million acres of the state) and 2021 (when more than 2,500 fires burned almost 1 million more), followed, of course, by the smoke from the devastating and ongoing Canadian wildfires of this spring and summer.
Three Indigenous plaintiffs testified that climate disruption has already ensured that their traditional sources of food and medicinal plants would become ever scarcer. As a result, it is preventing them from taking part in their usual cultural practices, including ones involving increasingly scarce snow. As the lawsuit put it, the changing planet has “disrupted tribal spiritual practices and longstanding rhythms of tribal life by changing the timing of natural events like bird migration.”
Testimony also showed that the extreme heat of recent summers, only expected to grow more severe in the coming years, is threatening the health of the plaintiffs, all of whom engage in extensive outdoor work or recreation. Those who participate in competitive sports have seen their training severely curtailed by summer heat (and for one of them, a Nordic skier, by lack of winter snow). The plaintiffs’ ability to hunt and fish, especially important in Montana, is being dramatically limited by drought and wildfire.
Some of the plaintiffs testified that increasing damage from storms, flooding, wildfires, and drought will make it ever more difficult, if not impossible, to keep their family’s property intact for coming generations. And backed by the testimony of several experts, the young plaintiffs explained how the increasing chaos brought on by climate change had left them with feelings of deep distress, despair, and loss.
Congressman Rosendale undoubtedly read none of their testimony, which made it so much easier for him to callously dismiss their plight, while accusing them of being witless “pawns” of far greater forces. How, after all, could anyone have been left unmoved by the poignant testimony of 20-year-old Olivia Vesovich? She told the court that, given the severe and ever worsening impact of climate change, she “would not want to make a child endure that. It is one of the greatest sadnesses of my life — and my family is one of the most important parts of my life — that I may not be starting a family of my own. It breaks my heart, it really does.”
Plaintiffs from the Future
From the 1990s through the first two decades of this century, academic discussion of “intergenerational climate justice” weighed the interests of the “current generation” that may or may not do what’s needed to end greenhouse gas emissions against “future generations” lacking any say in the matter. They will nonetheless suffer its increasingly severe consequences. (Of course, those of us in privileged societies have also largely ignored the billions of people globally with no say in the matter and so the functional equivalents of those “future generations.”)
Now, with heat waves, megafires, increasingly severe freak storms, and floods striking ever more often, those at-risk future generations are finally beginning to show up, well ahead of schedule. That, after all, is just what the Held v. Montana plaintiffs are, as are the young Global South activists who shook up the most recent world climate summits by refusing to accept the selling-out of their future.
Though it’s cited often enough in relation to climate change, there’s nothing magical about the year 2050. It’s just a nice, round, midcentury number. That’s undoubtedly why world climate negotiators have chosen it as the target year for national pledges to drive greenhouse gas emissions down to zero.
Come 2050, the Montana plaintiffs will only be in their thirties and forties. By that time, they should know whether the world acted boldly enough in the 2020s to turn the climate emergency around.
In court, the young plaintiffs expressed deep concern not only for their own health and well-being but for those of their potential children and grandchildren. What kind of future will they and their kids face? For one thing, those still living in Montana in 2050 can expect to deal with wildfire and smoke disasters far worse than the ones endured in 2017, 2021, or 2023. Predictions are that, without drastic action, between 2041 and 2070, much of Montana will see a 600% increase in the incidence of “very large wildfires” — those covering 20 square miles or more.
The fire risk will have been raised largely by intensifying global heat. Consider this warning from U.S. government scientists, should the world economy carry on with business-as-usual in the coming decades:
“[A] teenager in eastern Montana in 2075 might experience maximum summer temperatures that his or her grandparents would have had to travel to the Mojave Desert to see, [while] a child born in southern Texas in 2060 might experience as much as 6 weeks per summer when maximum temperatures are hotter than his or her grandparents experienced just once per year. And in this same future, a child in the southeastern United States can expect to spend more than half of his or her summer experiencing heat waves that would have occurred only 3 days per year for his or her grandparents.”
Unless there are steep reductions in global carbon emissions, Montana will be eternally burning, while much of the country to the south and east grows even hotter and more unbearably humid. So, should young Montanans migrate north to Canada? At one time, that seemed like a viable climate escape route. But in 2023, with a large share of the U.S. population inhaling smoke from the extraordinarily vast and intense wildfires burning across that country, month after month, northward migration could just be a jump from the frying pan into the all-too-literal fire.
A Constitutional Right to a Future
Such dire forecasts are based on worst-case “business-as-usual” scenarios, and that’s important. After all, catastrophe is not inevitable. If today’s youth find themselves facing such nightmares in the 2050s, it will be because our nation and the rest of the world didn’t act in a necessary fashion in this decade. Such conditions can indeed be prevented, but only if the climate struggle intensifies.
When the Montana 16 filed their suit in 2020, only two of them were old enough to vote in that fall’s election. But as Judge Seeley ruled, they all had standing to challenge the fossil-fuel juggernaut in a court of law. And so far, they’re winning.
Amber Polk, assistant professor of law at Florida International University, focuses her studies on new legal claims by the environmental rights movement. She recently wrote a short history of “green amendments” — constitutional provisions like the section of Article IX on which Held v. Montana relied. Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Montana, and Pennsylvania all added such provisions to their state constitutions in the 1970s, as environmentalism was surging. But in the 1980s and 1990s, legal cases based on green amendments foundered until, in 1999, the Supreme Court of — you guessed it! — Montana struck down laws that permitted water pollution, basing their decision on the constitutional “right” of state residents “to a clean and healthful environment.”
Fourteen years later, Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court relied on a similar green amendment to strike down a law permitting hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”) statewide. Until Held v. Montana, though, green amendments had not been used to challenge laws explicitly affecting climate policy. Count on one thing, however: they will be widely tested in the coming years (though a conservative, anything-but-environmentalist Supreme Court could prove a problem in wielding them).
The Montana case, writes Polk,
“sets a groundbreaking precedent for climate litigation and demonstrates a new way in which green amendments can be invoked to elicit environmental change. It suggests that in other states with green amendments, state laws cannot forbid the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and their climate impact during environmental review… In the states that have green amendments, climate advocates will certainly rely on the Montana youth case as they challenge state laws that promote climate change.
And expect ever more challenges in places where such green amendments exist. New York typically passed one last year and 13 other states — some red like Montana, some blue, some purple — are considering them, according to Polk.
Unfortunately, only limited reductions of greenhouse gases can be achieved via state-by-state challenges to bad laws. Congressional action would be needed to, for example, achieve the most essential policy of all: a rapid, mandatory phase-out of oil, natural gas, and coal nationwide. You would, however, need a very different Congress to have a hope in hell of passing such a bill. Still, such a phase-out is a goal of Juliana v. United States, another youth climate lawsuit, originally filed in federal court in 2015 and still pending after eight long years.
In that case, 21 plaintiffs, aged seven to 19 (at the time of its filing) and backed by Our Children’s Trust, allege that the federal government has permitted the continued extraction and burning of fossil fuels despite knowing that they cause “dangerous concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere and a dangerous climate system, and irreversible harm to the natural systems critical to Plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty, and property.” These activities, it adds, “unconstitutionally favor the present, temporary economic benefits of certain citizens, especially corporations, over Plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty, and property.”
In Juliana, the youthful plaintiffs are asking the courts to order the federal government to take wide-ranging, ambitious climate action, including “to prepare and implement an enforceable national remedial plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and draw down excess atmospheric CO2.”
Three administrations — Obama’s, Trump’s, and now Biden’s — have vigorously fought back against the youths’ case and, in 2021, it appeared doomed when an appeals court ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing. This summer, however, Juliana came back from the dead when a federal judge in Oregon ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial after amending their filing. It remains in limbo, however, thanks to continued fierce opposition from President Biden’s Department of Justice. As CNN reported, the DOJ “has argued there is no federal public trust doctrine that creates a right for a stable climate system for U.S. citizens.”
Such a refusal to take climate disruption seriously came even as the president was touring the country and bragging about energy and electric-vehicle projects related to the climate provisions in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act. Biden, it seems, is happy to take credit for limited green actions, but isn’t faintly ready to plan for truly phasing out fossil fuels and so keeping the world livable through this century and beyond. So, give some credit to the young who are pushing him, the courts, and Congress to ensure that they have a future worth living for. In truth, nothing matters more than that.
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The Youth of Montana and the People of Maui Know the Climate Crisis Is Here Now
The fire struck as the young plaintiffs of Montana won a historic legal victory acknowledging their right to a “clean and healthful environment.”
Aug 18, 2023
Climate change-fueled drought and high winds created the perfect conditions for raging wildfires across the Hawaiiian island of Maui last week, burning the historic town of Lāhainā to the ground. As of Thursday, the death toll was 111, but that number is expected to go much higher as the difficult task of searching the acres of burnt wreckage slowly proceeds. The number of people killed by the massive conflagration could surpass 1,000.
The fire struck on August 8, not long after the hottest July in recorded human history, and just as a decision was issued in an historic climate trial that took place in Helena, Montana, over 3,000 miles away. There, 16 young Montanans, aged five to 22, were suing the State of Montana for violating their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” After almost two and a half years of litigation, Montana Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs, declaring Montana law mandating aggressive promotion of fossil fuels at the expense of the climate was “unconstitutional on its face.”
Vixay Phonxaylinkham, a tourist visiting Lāhainā, told Reuters while at a shelter on Maui,
It got really real when we saw the flames, and I had to think fast. We had to get out. We left our vehicle. Myself and my wife and our five kids, we all got in the ocean. We found a floating board that we hung onto… It was just so surreal. Everything was burning around, explosions, cars blowing up, embers just flying. We couldn’t breathe. There was no air.
Countless stories are emerging of people who ran toward the flames to save a family member, friend, or pet, and perished in the wind-driven, 2,000°F wall of fire.
“I was born and raised in Maui. I’m Kānaka Maoli, Native Hawaiian, come from seven generations. And our island is on fire,” Kaniela Ing, former member of the Hawai‘i House of Representatives and now the national director of the Green New Deal Network, said on the Democracy Now! news hour. “Our most historic town was set ablaze by wildfires. Hundreds of people have been evacuated and hospitalized. The death toll is climbing, and people are searching for loved ones right now… We’re a tropical island here on Maui. We’re not supposed to have wildfires.”
“Lahaina Town is often characterized as a tourist town, but the people who live there—which should be the focus—tend to be some of the most rooted Native Hawaiians that I’ve ever met,” Ing explained. “They’re really the keepers of the ancestral knowledge… the fire is a tragic symbol of this trajectory’s terminal point, like where it all ends up if you continue down this mode of extraction as a way to live.”
In the same week that Judge Seeley issued her ruling, barring Montana from implementing its pro-fossil fuel laws, the state had 43 active wildfires, fanned by record-breaking triple-digit temperatures and high winds.
Extraction was central to the case made by the Montana youths who prevailed at trial. In the same week that Judge Seeley issued her ruling, barring Montana from implementing its pro-fossil fuel laws, the state had 43 active wildfires, fanned by record-breaking triple-digit temperatures and high winds.
“Montana is one of the states in our country that has had laws on the books that requires it to promote fossil fuel energy and fossil fuel development at a time when we’re in a climate emergency,” Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law group representing the youth plaintiffs, said on Democracy Now! “Their laws also require them to ignore the consequences of that and the ways in which greenhouse gas emissions fuel the climate crisis. So, these young people used the Montana Constitution, which protects not just the right to a clean and healthful environment, but also the right to dignity, to health and safety and happiness and equal protection of the law.”
Olson and Our Children’s Trust have similar cases pending in other states, including in Hawai‘i, and in the case known as Juliana v. United States.
“In 2015, we filed a case on behalf of 21 youth… against the federal government for its active role in causing the climate crisis,” Olson said. “The Biden administration and the attorney general, Garland, and Solicitor General Prelogar are fighting tooth and nail, just like the Trump administration did, to stop this trial.” In one of its most recent court filings in the Juliana case, as reported by Lever News, the Biden administration argued “there is no constitutional right to a stable climate system.”
The youth plaintiffs of Montana, Hawai‘i, and elsewhere beg to differ, as do the Native Hawaiians and residents of Maui. The climate crisis is not a looming threat; it is here now.
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'Nothing Short of Outrageous': Attorneys for Youth Climate Plaintiffs Blast Biden DOJ
"It is our hope and expectation that the courts will see through the DOJ's tactics and ensure that this constitutional case gets to trial immediately," said a lawyer with Our Children's Trust.
Jul 07, 2023
Nearly eight years since 21 young Americans launched a landmark federal climate lawsuit against the U.S. government, their lawyers this week called out President Joe Biden's administration for trying to get the case dismissed using recycled arguments.
In a Friday statement responding to the U.S. Department of Justice's most recent push to have Juliana v. United States dismissed, Andrea Rodgers, one of the Our Children's Trust attorneys for the youth plaintiffs, charged that "the DOJ's conduct throughout the course of this case has been nothing short of outrageous."
Her comments came as the world has faced record-shattering heat throughout the week that bolstered demands for climate action.
"As children all around this country experience unprecedented temperatures, deadly wildfire smoke, and catastrophic storms, the government fiddles and tries to prevent these young plaintiffs from presenting evidence in open court as to how they are being harmed by their government's national fossil fuel-based energy system," Rodgers said. "It is our hope and expectation that the courts will see through the DOJ's tactics and ensure that this constitutional case gets to trial immediately."
First filed in August 2015, the suit claims that through the U.S. government's actions that contribute to the climate emergency, it has violated young people's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and failed to protect essential public trust resources.
Throughout the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, Juliana has faced various hurdles—leading up to early last month, when U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the case could proceed to trial on an amended complaint.
"The United States government and its Department of Justice... have sought not justice under the rule of law, but to 'kill the Juliana case' no matter its legal merit."
Juliana plaintiff Nathan Baring said at the time that "our policymakers, legal scholars, and, most importantly, our judiciary, must now heed Judge Aiken's words that 'when government conduct catastrophically harms American citizens, the judiciary is constitutionally required to perform its independent role."
Meanwhile, in late June, the Biden administration ignored public pressure to stop fighting the case and filed another motion to dismiss it, just after the conclusion of the nation's the first-ever children's constitutional climate trial. Our Children's Trust represents the youth in that case, Held v. State of Montana, as well as the Juliana plaintiffs.
Attorneys with Our Children's Trust and Gregory Law Group began their Thursday response to the recent dismissal request by declaring that "for eight years and across three presidential administrations, the United States government and its Department of Justice (DOJ) have sought not justice under the rule of law, but to 'kill the Juliana case' no matter its legal merit."
"The U.S. DOJ has used every rare legal tool, more times than in any other case in history, to silence the constitutional claims of 21 of our nation's youth," the document notes. "Throughout the years of their failure, defendants have been unwilling to accept the standing and valid claims of these young people and previous rulings that this meritorious case should proceed to trial."
"While they have been seeking to foil Juliana, every single administration has simultaneously expanded the United States' fossil fuel energy system, thereby making this nation the largest producer of fossil fuels on Earth, exacerbating the climate crisis, and intensifying the constitutional injuries of these young plaintiffs," the filing continues. "Defendants' current motion to dismiss contravenes prior decisions of this court and the 9th Circuit, as well as President Biden's own executive orders and commitments these defendants have made to the American people, and especially its youth."
Urging the court to deny the DOJ's "rinse-and-repeat" motion, the lawyers argued that "this case involves an emergency of epic proportions: it is time for the United States to stand trial for creating an 'environmental apocalypse' and putting these youth's lives, health, and safety in jeopardy in intentional violation of the U.S. Constitution."
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