Dear Friends,

It is with a heart filled with both sadness and inspiration that I share that one of our movement’s heroes, Professor “Bill” Rodgers died earlier this week. Not only was he one of the founders of the field of environmental law, but he was also the beloved father and source of tremendous inspiration to my friend and colleague Andrea Rodgers who serves as Our Children’s Trust’s Senior Litigation Attorney.

Congress called upon Professor Rodgers to testify on every bedrock environmental statute enacted in the 1970s, even using one of his law review articles as a precursor for the Clean Water Act.

He argued cases on environmental, energy, and Indian law matters in the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, U.S. District Courts and state courts. He filed countless petitions with the government, including one of the first legal petitions to ban DDT and with the Seattle Chief of Police seeking stricter gun control. His heart, insight, incisiveness, and persuasiveness were unparalleled.

Professor Rodgers taught and mentored generations of law students from 1967 to 2018, “nudging them to investigate, litigate, testify and write legislation.” He was a constant source of encouragement to each generation of environmental lawyers including our team at Our Children’s Trust. From the time of our founding in 2010, Professor Rodgers believed in not only our mission, but our ability to win our cases on behalf of children. When other legal scholars balked, Bill encouraged us onward.

He shared with his daughter Andrea his understanding that climate change is a game changer – telling her this is the biggest challenge you will ever face.

Photo of Andrea and her dad Bill Rodgers from A Climate of TRUST, 2014.

And while the climate crisis might be the most complex problem our world has ever faced, Bill and Andrea would both say: it is not impossible. This is at the heart of our work at Our Children’s Trust.

We invite you to invest in Bill’s legacy and his steadfast belief in our litigation strategy.  Like her father, Andrea continues to argue cases from Juliana v. United States to Navahine F. v. Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation to Held v. State of Montana. In the last days of Bill’s life, Andrea sat reading to him Judge Jeffrey Crabtree’s April 6 ruling denying the State of Hawai‘i’s motion to dismiss the Navahine case, telling the 14 youth plaintiffs they will have their voices heard in court.

We are able to bring these groundbreaking cases on behalf of youth to protect their constitutional rights because people like Bill Rodgers helped build a foundation and fertilized the soils we are seeding and toiling. But it wasn’t just his exceptional legal mind we were gifted, it was also his gentle, generous, gracious love of so many among us, most importantly his grandchildren, his son, and his incredible daughter—who will carry Bill Rodgers’ legacy forward.

Julia Olson

Executive Director and Chief Legal Counsel