Court tosses out kids’ lawsuit against US over climate change

Ninth circuit judges say they are sympathetic but court's power is limited

A federal appeals court on Friday dismissed a highprofile lawsuit filed by 21 young people who argued that the U.S. government violated their constitutional rights by failing to do enough to reduce climate change despite longestablished science showing the dangers of a warming planet.

In a 2-1 opinion written by judges who are appointees of former President Obama, the San Franciscobased court said it is beyond the court’s authority to “order, design, supervise, or implement” the sweeping changes that the young people were seeking in their potentially landmark lawsuit. Instead, the Constitution gives those powers to Congress, the president and voters, the court concluded.

“The plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government,” Judge Andrew Hurwitz wrote for the majority.

The case, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 by 21 young people, then ages 8 to 19, with the help of environmental organizations, Our Children’s Trust and Earth Guardians. They said climate change was harming their basic Constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.

The case is the latest example of the growing political movement by young people to pressure the older generation to do more to address climate change.

Its most prominent voice, Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, 17, was named TIME magazine’s person of the year in 2019.

The young people who filed the lawsuit gained considerable attention after winning a district court ruling in Oregon in 2016. Climate activists saw the case as a potential expansion of environmental law that could force the Obama, and later the Trump administrations, into taking broader steps to reduce the burning of fossil fuels, with such steps as expanding renewable energy and electric vehicles, imposing fees on carbon pollution nationwide, as California and some New England states have done, and other possible measures.

“The plaintiffs have made a compelling case that action is needed,” Friday’s ruling said. “It will be increasingly difficult in light of that record for the political branches to deny that climate change is occurring, that the government has had a role in causing it, and that our elected officials have a moral responsibility to seek solutions.”

But, the court added, citing Article 3 of the Constitution, which established the federal courts: “We reluctantly conclude, however, that the plaintiffs’ case must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large, the latter of which can change the composition of the political branches through the ballot box. That the other branches may have abdicated their responsibility to remediate the problem does not confer on Article III courts, no matter how well-intentioned, the ability to step into their shoes.”

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Josephine Staton, also an Obama appointee, said the federal government is ignoring a vital problem, and that even a partial court ruling ordering some changes, as in past civil rights cases, would be useful.

” It is as if an asteroid were barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our only defenses,” she said.

“My colleagues throw up their hands,” Staton added, “concluding that this case presents nothing fit for the judiciary… the mere fact that this suit cannot alone halt climate change does not mean that it presents no claim suitable for judicial resolution.”

The plaintiffs can still appeal to the entire Ninth Circuit, although a victory there is considered an uphill battle given Friday’s ruling.

“We will be asking the full Ninth Circuit to review the determination that federal courts can do nothing to address an admitted constitutional violation,” Andrea Rodgers, a senior attorney for Our Children’s Trust, said in a statement. “That appeal will be filed in the coming weeks.”

Conservative groups cheered the ruling.

“We applaud the majority’s dismissal of this case,” said Sam Kazman, an attorney for the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington D.C. think tank. “The court correctly understood that a lawsuit aimed at imposing a national plan to eliminate fossil fuel emissions and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide would push the court far beyond its constitutional powers.”

Earlier this week, with record wildfires blackening Australia amid searing heat in that country, scientists at NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, announced that the past decade was the hottest in recorded history, and that 2019 was the second-hottest year globally since 1880 when modern temperature records first began.

President Donald Trump has vowed to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, a coalition of countries who vowed to take voluntary steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that could limit warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. Under the agreement, which was signed by Obama, the official action to remove the U.S. from the pact cannot come until November. Meanwhile, every Democratic presidential candidate has vowed to continue the U.S. participation if elected, and to expand solar, wind and other renewable energy.

A new poll released Thursday by Yale and George Mason universities found 58% of Americans saying are “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change, up from 45% in 2014, while just 20% are “dismissive” or “doubtful” about it, down from 25% in 2014.