[ Amid multiple ecological crises, the Justice Department is
attempting to kill kids’ landmark climate case.]
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BIDEN DOJ: “NO CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO STABLE CLIMATE”  
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David Sirota, Matthew Cunningham-Cook
August 16, 2023
The Lever
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_ Amid multiple ecological crises, the Justice Department is
attempting to kill kids’ landmark climate case. _

Burnt areas in Lahaina on the Maui island, Hawaii, on Aug. 11, 2023,
following a wildfire., Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources
via AP

 

As a heatwave scorched America with record-breaking temperatures this
June, the Biden administration attempted to block a landmark climate
lawsuit by declaring that “there is no constitutional right to a
stable climate system,” according to court
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records
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reviewed by _The Lever_.

The assertion in _Juliana v. United States_ — which echoed both the
Trump and Obama administrations’ legal claims in the same
long-running case — was part of the Justice Department’s latest
attempt to halt the suit brought by children who assert
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that the Constitution requires the federal government to maintain a
climate that supports human life.

That suit’s momentum could be bolstered by a separate legal victory
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in Montana this week, but neither the victory nor the intensifying
climate disaster appear to have stopped the Biden administration’s
crusade to kill the federal case. Indeed, Biden’s Justice Department
filed its most recent motion to dismiss the case in the same week
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that large swaths of the country were under extreme heat warnings.

That filing came as President Joe Biden has refused repeated calls to
declare a climate emergency, and as his administration backed
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a court case designed to accelerate the construction of a massive
fossil gas pipeline, despite scientists’ climate warnings. Biden’s
administration has also declared
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the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific report
about climate change “does not present sufficient cause" to halt a
massive expansion of fossil fuel drilling.

“It is deeply disheartening to see the Biden Administration claim
that Americans have ‘no constitutional right to a stable
climate,’” Julia Olson, lead counsel for the _Juliana _plaintiffs,
told _The Lever_. “When President Biden ran for office, he promised
America’s youth that he would take bold action to combat climate
change, but instead the United States is leading the world on
producing fossil fuels, the very thing that is furthering climate
change. Instead of fighting these young people at every turn, the U.S.
Department of Justice should let youth have their day in court.”

The effort to halt the _Juliana _suit is also supported by Republicans
bankrolled by the fossil fuel industry. In 2021, a group of Republican
attorneys general tried [[link removed]] unsuccessfully
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to intervene as defendants in the case. Top donors last election cycle
to the Republican Attorneys General Association, the state
officials’ campaign and policy hub, included the oil giant Koch
Industries ($885,000), the fossil fuel lobby American Petroleum
Institute ($175,000), and oil and gas companies Valero Energy and
Exxon Mobil ($125,000 apiece), according to data from Political
Moneyline.

In the Biden administration’s June 22 court filing
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Justice Department lawyers argued that because the child plaintiffs
are not the only people who will be harmed by ecological breakdown,
the suit should be thrown out.

“The state of the climate is a public and generalized issue, and so
interests in the climate are unlike the particularized personal
liberty or personal privacy interests of individuals the Supreme Court
has previously recognized as being protected by fundamental rights,”
the Justice Department wrote.

The federal case, which is being spearheaded by the nonprofit public
interest law firm Our Children’s Trust, asserts that the U.S.
constitution requires the government to combat the climate crisis and
stop
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promulgating policies, like fossil fuel subsidies, that are
intensifying the crisis in order to protect Americans’ right to
life. Similar cases are now unfolding in state courts across the
country, where plaintiffs argue that state constitutions enshrine
similar rights to a livable climate.

This week, a Montana court ruled in favor
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of children in that state in a lawsuit that claimed the state’s
process for approving fossil fuel permits violated the Montana state
constitution.

It was the first time in the United States that a youth-backed climate
change lawsuit has gone to trial. State District Judge Kathy Seeley
wrote in her opinion, “Every additional ton of [greenhouse gas]
emissions exacerbates plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in
irreversible climate injuries.”

She also noted that state residents “have a fundamental
constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which
includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system.”

Earlier this year, Hawaii’s Supreme Court similarly recognized
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to a clean and healthful environment” includes “the right to a
life-sustaining climate system.”

“It Is As If An Asteroid Were Barreling Toward Earth”

The _Juliana_ case was originally filed in 2015 by 21 young
plaintiffs, who sued the Obama administration in Eugene, Oregon,
federal court for pursuing fossil fuel expansion policies while
knowing the efforts threatened the habitability of the planet.
President Barack Obama’s attorneys fought the suit, urging the court
in 2015 to “reject plaintiffs’ claim to a fundamental
constitutional right to be free of CO2 emissions.”

In 2016, Oregon District Court Judge Ann Aiken allowed the case to
move forward, ruling
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that “I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of
sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.”

After Donald Trump’s election, his justice department repeatedly
tried to have the case tossed out, arguing
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that “there is no constitutional right to a ‘stable climate
system.’”

In 2020, a federal appeals court panel sided with the Trump
administration and dismissed the lawsuit.

U.S. District Court Judge Josephine Staton dissented
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these proceedings, the government accepts as fact that the United
States has reached a tipping point crying out for a concerted response
— yet presses ahead toward calamity. It is as if an asteroid were
barreling toward Earth and the government decided to shut down our
only defenses.”

But in June 2023, Aiken revived the case in Oregon by ruling that an
amended version of the plaintiffs’ complaint could proceed to trial.
Since then, the Biden Justice Department has filed multiple motions to
dismiss
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or delay
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the case, repeatedly arguing, among other things, that nothing in the
Constitution guarantees the right to a secure climate.

The case is expected to go to trial next June in Oregon.

Youth climate lawsuits are also moving through state courts in Utah,
Virginia, and Hawaii. On August 3, a Honolulu judge set
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a June 2024 trial date for the latter case — just days before
wildfires began to rage through Maui.

* Joe Biden
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* Climate Change
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* climate lawsuit
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