Juliana v. United States

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Juliana, et al. v. United States of America, et al. was a climate-related lawsuit filed in 2015 and dismissed in 2020. Filed by 21 youth plaintiffs against the United States and several executive branch officials. Filing their case in the United States District Court for the District of Oregon , the plaintiffs, represented by the non-profit organization Our Children's Trust , include Xiuhtezcatl Martinez , the members of Martinez's organization Earth Guardians, and climatologist James Hansen as a "guardian for future generations". Some fossil fuel and industry groups initially intervened as defendants but later requested to be dropped following the 2016 presidential election , stating that the case would be well defended under the new administration.

Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States. Kelsey Juliana is second from the right in the second row.

The plaintiffs asserted that the government had knowingly violated their due process rights of life, liberty, and property , as well as the government's sovereign duty to protect public grounds, by encouraging and permitting the combustion of fossil fuels . They called for the government to offer “both declaratory and injunctive relief for their claim—specifically, a declaration of the federal government's fiduciary role in preserving the atmosphere and an injunction of its actions which contravene that role.” The case is an example of an area of environmental law referred to as "atmospheric trust litigation", a concept based on the public trust doctrine and international responsibility related to natural resources.

The Ninth Circuit dismissed the suit in January 2020 for lack of standing , upheld en banc in February 2021. The plaintiffs filed an amended complaint in an attempt to address standing. The amended suit was dismissed by the Ninth Circuit in May 2024, again over lack of standing. The Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear the case by March 2025.

Contents

• 1 Case history

  • 1.1 Background

  • 1.2 Initial hearings

  • 1.3 Government objections

  • 1.4 Interlocutory appeal

  • 1.5 Amended complaint

• 2 Involved parties

  • 2.1 Plaintiffs

  • 2.2 Defendants

• 3 Influence

• 4 See also

• 5 References

• 6 External links

Case history

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juliana_v._United_States&action=edit&section=1 "Edit section: Case history")

Background

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juliana_v._United_States&action=edit&section=2 "Edit section: Background")

Climate change litigation has been attempted since the 1990s. The Oregon non-profit organization, Our Children's Trust, was created by attorney Julia Olson to help formulate legal cases that could be taken against states and the federal government that would charge them with mitigating climate change under the public trust doctrine .[1] Olson established the non-profit with advice and assistance from Mary Christina Wood , director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Law Program at the University of Oregon , who had been studying the concept of the public trust doctrine and established the idea of "Atmospheric Trust Litigation" to take legal action to make governments responsible for actions related to climate change.[2] [1] Part of Our Children's Trust's inspiration was from Oposa's work in the Philippines. Since 2011, Our Children's Trust has been filing various state and federal lawsuits on behalf of youth, though most of these have been dismissed by courts, as courts generally have not ruled that access to a clean environment is a right that can be litigated against.[3] [4] [1] Such cases are also generally dismissed as lawsuits cannot be initiated by "generalized grievances", and require plaintiffs with standing to sue and can demonstrate concrete harm that the government has done, and that the courts can at least partially redress the harm by order of the court.[5] Further, cases cannot be brought to court if they deal with a "political question " which can only be resolved by actions of Congress and the President.[5]

A few related cases on climate change have made it to the Supreme Court. The first, which opened the way for the others, was _Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency _, 549 U.S. 497 (2007). In that suit, twelve states sued the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for failing to regulate emissions of greenhouse gases and sought relief. The Court agreed with the states by a 5–4 vote on each of three issues: that the states had standing to sue the EPA for not issuing regulations, that greenhouse gases were air pollutants, and that the EPA was authorized to regulate them.[6] The majority opinion stated that, while any regulation made by the EPA would be unlikely to stop global warming, the agency should be required to regulate such emissions to reduce the extent of global warming.[5] Further, Massachusetts v. EPA modified standing precedent by ruling that only one plaintiff had to demonstrate a particularized harm. Subsequent cases were less successful. For example, an attempt to sue public utilities for greenhouse gas emissions under a "public nuisance " theory invoking the federal common law of nuisance was unanimously rejected by the Court in 2011 in _American Electric Power Co. v. Connecticut _, 564 U.S. 410 (2011).[7] Also, a challenge to the EPA's subsequent regulations on greenhouse gases was upheld in part and denied in part in _Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA _, 573 U.S. ___ (2014), a ruling which rejected the EPA's expansive reading of its powers by a 5–4 vote but permitted EPA to implement greenhouse gas regulation on existing monitored power plants by a 7–2 vote.[8] [9]

Initial hearings

(https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Juliana_v._United_States&action=edit&section=3 "Edit section: Initial hearings")

Climatologist James Hansen , who was representing the youth as a "guardian for future generations"

The present case was filed in August 2015 with the [United States District Court for the District of Oregon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_District_Court_for_the_Distri

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