Appeals Court Affirms Dismissal of Youth Climate Case Against Trump

A federal appeals court has sided with the Trump administration and 19 Republican-led states in a constitutional challenge to several of President Donald Trump’s executive orders designed to boost fossil fuels, concluding that the youth plaintiffs failed to bring a viable case against the federal government. In affirming a lower court’s dismissal of the lawsuit, called Lighthiser v. Trump, the appeals court said that it was not the role of the judiciary to supervise government energy policy.

The ruling, issued by a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Portland, Oregon, on Tuesday, came after the panel heard the case in April. During the hearing the judges—an Obama appointee, a Biden appointee and a Trump appointee—expressed skepticism toward some of the plaintiffs’ arguments, such as the assertion that their requested relief was manageable and that the case was meaningfully distinct from a previous youth climate suit against the federal government called Juliana v. United States, which the Ninth Circuit had also dismissed.

Unlike Juliana, a case alleging that the government’s decades-long, systemic fossil fuel-based energy policies were unconstitutional, the Lighthiser case targeted just three executive orders signed by Trump at the beginning of his second term, including two orders—“Unleashing American Energy” and “Declaring a National Energy Emergency”—issued on his first day back in office. The 22 youth plaintiffs wanted the court to declare the orders unconstitutional, since they are expected to unleash more dangerous carbon pollution and worsen the climate emergency. Plaintiffs also asked the court to block the Trump administration from taking further actions to implement the orders. 

But last fall a federal district court in Montana dismissed the case, determining that it could not redress the plaintiffs’ alleged harms from the orders because that would involve overseeing a multitude of federal agencies and actions and would tread into the realm of policymaking. The court pointed to the Ninth Circuit’s dismissal of the Juliana case in its decision, saying it viewed that ruling as binding precedent.

In its decision Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit panel said that it, too, was “not persuaded” that the requested relief in this case would be all that different from what the Juliana plaintiffs were seeking, saying that in both cases it would “require extensive judicial supervision of executive branch actions related to energy policy.” 

The Lighthiser plaintiffs’ “sweeping” challenge to hundreds of agency actions, all taken under the executive orders, through one lawsuit is “unprecedented,” the court further asserted. 

The panel also cited the Juliana case in saying that it once again rejects plaintiffs’ argument that a court order declaring government conduct—in this case the challenged orders — unconstitutional would deliver meaningful relief.

Youth plaintiffs and their attorneys sharply criticized the court’s decision, arguing that the court failed to do its job and that the ruling authorizes the president to continue to harm the nation’s children unchecked through a “sweeping fossil fuel agenda.”

“The court never said we were wrong. They never said the harm isn’t real. They just said they wouldn’t stop the harm,” said lead plaintiff Eva Lighthiser. “They had the power to act and they chose not to. By the time we are harmed enough to satisfy them, it will be too late.”

“The court did not decide whether these executive orders are constitutional. It did not decide whether the federal government may knowingly endanger children. Instead, it slammed the courthouse doors on children fighting for their lives and told them to file hundreds of cases against every agency action carrying out the President’s unconstitutional executive orders,” Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and co-executive director of the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust, said in a statement.

“Courts do not become policymakers when they stop unconstitutional government action,” Olson added. “That is their job. These young people deserve a court willing to do it.”

The Department of Justice issued a statement on the ruling, saying the Ninth Circuit Court “unanimously affirmed what the district court said months ago—the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring this suit because they did not establish that the Executive Orders caused any injury or that any injury could be redressed by the courts.” 

Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, who led a 19-state coalition that intervened in the case as defendants backing the Trump administration, called the court’s decision “a huge win for Montana.” 

“My office was happy to step in and help the Trump Administration litigate this case,” Knudsen said in a statement. “We couldn’t have asked for a better outcome, as now two courts have proven that we were right all along—this case was nothing more than an attempt to stop President Trump’s pro-energy policies and push a bad-for-Montana liberal climate agenda.”

The case was filed in Montana, the home state of many of the youth plaintiffs, including some who successfully sued their state government over a law that prohibited regulators from considering climate impacts and greenhouse gas emissions when approving fossil fuel projects. That lawsuit, Held v. Montana, was the first climate case of its kind to go to trial in the United States, and the youth plaintiffs’ triumph was considered a historic breakthrough for climate accountability. 

It is unclear whether the Lighthiser plaintiffs will mount a further appeal and take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our Children’s Trust said in a press release that plaintiffs’ attorneys are “reviewing the decision carefully and assessing all legal options available to these young people, whose lives, health, safety, and futures are on the line.”