Suing Like the Future Depends on It

On his first day back in office in January, President Donald Trump signed several executive orders that prioritize and promote fossil fuels while reversing course on climate action and clean energy. In addition to orders withdrawing the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, encouraging more oil drilling in Alaska and blocking wind energy projects, Trump issued a pair of directives titled “Unleashing American Energy” and “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” that are expressly aimed at boosting fossil fuels — despite expert consensus that coal, oil and gas must be phased out to avert the most catastrophic climate change harms. 

“On my first day in office I terminated the Green New Scam, I declared a national energy emergency and I withdrew from the unfair … Paris Climate Accord,” Trump boasted in April when he signed an order designed to “reinvigorate” the waning coal industry. The order ends the leasing moratorium for coal on federal land and accelerates permitting and funding for new coal projects. 

Now, the president and his administration are facing a lawsuit from young Americans challenging these three executive orders that “unleash” fossil fuels during a time of climate crisis. On May 29, lawyers from the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust filed suit in federal district court in Montana on behalf of 22 youth climate activists ranging in age from 7 to 25 who allege that Trump’s pro-fossil fuel orders infringe on their rights to life and liberty under the U.S. Constitution. 

“Trump’s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,” 19-year-old lead plaintiff Eva Lighthiser said. 

The lawsuit Lighthiser v. Trump contends that the Trump administration’s executive actions accelerating fossil fuel development and attacking clean energy, environmental protections and climate science will significantly worsen the climate emergency that disproportionately impacts children and future generations and threatens their health, safety and quality of life. 

“We argue that those actions violate the youths’ Fifth Amendment rights to life and liberty that are secured under the United States Constitution,” said Andrea Rodgers, deputy director of U.S. strategy at Our Children’s Trust and an attorney representing the youth plaintiffs. 

Defendants include Trump as well as many members of his Cabinet and the agencies they run, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce, which houses the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through actions taken to implement Trump’s orders, the defendant agencies are mounting a “wholesale attack on clean renewable energy and climate science,” Our Children’s Trust says. 

The lawsuit also claims the Trump administration is attempting to unlawfully override federal laws intended to protect public health and the environment, such as the Clean Air Act and a statute requiring the federal government to periodically produce scientific reports on climate change called National Climate Assessments. The administration has terminated contracts and fired the scientists working on the next report, effectively preventing it from going forward. 

“The president is knowingly putting young people’s lives in danger to serve fossil fuel interests while silencing scientists and defying laws passed by Congress,” said Julia Olson, founder and co-executive director of Our Children’s Trust. 

“My health, my future and my right to speak the truth are all on the line,” Lighthiser argued. She said Trump is “waging war on us with fossil fuels as his weapon, and we’re fighting back with the Constitution.” 

The youth plaintiffs are asking the court to declare that Trump’s executive orders are unconstitutional and to block all actions taken to implement them. 

‘Limited traction in the federal courts’

Many of these young activists have experience suing their government over climate change. More than half of the 22 plaintiffs have been involved in other climate cases that Our Children’s Trust has filed over the years at the state and federal levels. 

In 2015, the organization supported a group of 21 young people in bringing a landmark lawsuit against the U.S. government challenging the perpetuation of a fossil fuel-based energy system that contributes to dangerous climate change. The lawsuit, Juliana v. U.S., argued that the government was affirmatively endangering the nation’s youth through policies and actions that worsen the climate crisis, and that this conduct violated youths’ fundamental rights under the Constitution. It initially sought an order for the government to develop and implement a climate recovery plan to rapidly phase out fossil fuels and slash greenhouse gas emissions. But after a federal appeals court decided in 2020 that it was beyond the power of the judiciary to grant such sweeping relief, the youth plaintiffs revised their complaint to request solely a court declaration that the government’s conduct was unconstitutional. 

Although the trial court judge had determined the case should advance, the appeals court once again blocked it, and in March the U.S. Supreme Court declined plaintiffs’ request to review that decision. After nearly 10 years of intense procedural wrangling and unprecedented obstruction from government defendants that spanned three presidential administrations — including Trump’s first term — the Juliana case had finally come to an end. 

Several of the plaintiffs from Juliana have now joined the new case against the Trump administration. Rodgers said the new lawsuit is more narrowly framed, which could make it easier for courts to handle. “The Juliana case really focused on the overall energy system, whereas the present case challenges these specific executive orders and specific, discrete actions under those orders,” she explained. 

The new case also brings some different legal claims, Rodgers said. “This case is really a right to life case. Juliana was centered on the unenumerated liberty right to a life-sustaining climate system, but here we’re focused on protecting young people’s rights that are already explicitly recognized in the Constitution.” 

Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, said the new case targeting Trump might not run into the same headwinds that Juliana did. 

“This case does not face quite as steep a hill as Juliana, which asked the court to require the federal government to adopt and implement a plan to transform the nation’s energy system,” Gerrard said. “The relief sought here is less sweeping, though still ambitious. However, these constitutional theories have had limited traction in the federal courts so far.”

A federal court in California, for example, has rejected another lawsuit that Our Children’s Trust filed on behalf of 18 youth plaintiffs in December 2023 against the EPA. That case, Genesis v. EPA, alleges that the agency intentionally discriminates against children through a practice called discounting that is used in regulatory cost-benefit analyses, thereby violating youth plaintiffs’ constitutional right to equal protection. The youth are appealing the court’s ruling to dismiss the case. 

Youth climate cases succeed in Hawaii and Montana 

In the past two years, however, Our Children’s Trust has had breakthrough victories in youth climate cases it has filed at the state level in Hawaii and Montana. The case in Hawaii, which specifically focused on the state’s fossil fuel-dependent transportation system, was scheduled to go to trial last year in June. But just days before trial, Hawaii’s governor and its department of transportation reached a historic settlement agreement with the youth plaintiffs. The agreement recognized youths’ right to a life-sustaining climate system under the Hawaii constitution and set out a pathway for fully decarbonizing the state’s transportation sector over the next 20 years. Kalālapa Winter, one of the plaintiffs in that case, is now a plaintiff in the new case brought against the Trump administration. 

In Montana, 16 youth activists put their state government on trial in June 2023 over a policy explicitly prohibiting examination of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts when permitting fossil fuel projects or other development. It was the first-ever climate change trial in a lawsuit brought by young people in the United States. In the weeks following the trial, the judge ruled in favor of the youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, finding that the state’s policy violated their rights under the Montana constitution, including the right to a clean and healthful environment. In December last year, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the judgment on appeal. 

Ten of the youth plaintiffs from that landmark lawsuit in Montana, including Lighthiser, are coming together again as plaintiffs in the case taking on the Trump administration. 

Lighthiser said joining the new case felt “like the logical next step,” one that she hopes will compel the federal government to take her generation’s concerns about climate change seriously. “Being part of Held, we really had our voices heard,” she said. “I think winning would mean the person in the highest seat of power in the world would have to listen to the voices of young people.” 

“The voice of youth in the climate litigation sphere is incredibly powerful,” Cara Horowitz, executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the UCLA School of Law, told Truthdig. “Litigation like this is an important tool for highlighting some of the folks who are most at risk from climate change, who are of course our children.” 

For 18-year-old Ripley (who requested her last name not be used), getting involved in this new lawsuit seemed necessary given the Trump administration’s blatant actions to actively make the climate crisis even worse. “It feels like I’m screaming into a void,” she said. “This is something that I felt like I had to do.” 

The recent high school graduate said she felt incredibly inspired watching youth from her home state of Montana take their state government to court, and win. “I realized the extent to which I can create change,” she said. “And it gives me hope that we can win this case as well, 100%.” 

What happens next 

On June 13, attorneys for the youth plaintiffs filed a request for a preliminary injunction — essentially, a court order that would immediately pause implementation of Trump’s pro fossil fuel executive orders. The request is substantiated with expert declarations explaining how the administration’s actions are already harming children and arguing that there is no reason for the government to be boosting fossil fuels, since renewable energy can deliver more affordable and safe energy. 

“The United States no longer needs fossil fuels for its energy purposes and has not for some time. Given the longevity and expense of expanding fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure, the executive orders will lock in continuing fossil fuel use for decades to come,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Jacobson and several other experts who filed declarations also testified on behalf of youth plaintiffs during the Held v. Montana trial. 

z, said the request for an immediate halt to Trump’s orders, which undermine solar and wind energy while eliminating pollution controls, is justified. “Plaintiffs’ request for immediate judicial intervention reflects the founding generation’s design for checking poor presidential choices like these,” he said. “These policies are causing irreparable harm for no good reason.” 

Government defendants have until July 11 to respond to the plaintiffs’ filing. Attorneys for the youth say they plan to promptly reply and then request that the court schedule an evidentiary hearing as soon as possible. 

“We believe these actions the defendants are taking need to be stopped immediately,” Rodgers said. “There’s no time to waste.”