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"This case is about addressing the climate crisis and protecting our fundamental rights like our right to life and freedom. However, it is also about ensuring access to justice," said one plaintiff.
Demanding that the U.S. Supreme Court correct "an egregious error" by the Trump-appointed judges who dismissed their landmark case in May, the 21 plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States on Thursday filed a petition asking the high court to take action that would require the lower judicial panel to "follow the rule of law and precedent."
The petition was announced by Our Children's Trust, the legal group that has represented the Juliana plaintiffs for nearly a decade since they filed their lawsuit asserting that the government's support for fossil fuel extraction and other actions have "violated the youngest generation's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources."
The group asked the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus—a legal tool which can be used to "confine an inferior court to a lawful exercise of prescribed jurisdiction, or when there is an usurpation of judicial power," according to the Department of Justice.
The maneuver is the same one that was used repeatedly by the DOJ under three different presidents since Juliana was first filed in 2015, with the Biden administration successfully dismissing the case this year.
By adhering to the DOJ's writ of mandamus and blocking a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken, who late last year had decided in favor of giving the plaintiffs a court trial, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel "did not follow the rule of law and precedent, and flagrantly disregarded the limits Congress and the Supreme Court placed on its jurisdiction," said Our Children's Trust on Thursday.
"Today, I'm asking the Supreme Court to correct the 9th Circuit's abuse of the rules meant to protect our ability as young citizens to bring cases against our government. The rule of law and our constitutional democracy depend on it," said one plaintiff named Avery. "If you care about justice, fundamental rights, and the preservation of our democracy, you care about Juliana. This case is about addressing the climate crisis and protecting our fundamental rights like our right to life and freedom. However, it is also about ensuring access to justice. I urge the Supreme Court to make a decision that will make their children, grandchildren, and all future generations proud. Let us go to trial."
Our Children's Trust noted that the panel of judges appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump attempted to "obscure" their ruling in May "by issuing a brief, unpublished order."
"Such actions undermine the integrity of the judiciary and threaten the fairness of the legal process for citizen litigants who are not wielding the power of the federal government's resources," the group said.
The 9th Circuit ruling also disregarded the Supreme Court's mandatory conditions for a writ of mandamus, which can only be granted if there is no other way to get relief from a "significant harm" caused by a lower court and if the right to relief is "clear and indisputable."
"The DOJ's petition did not even address or come close to meeting these criteria," said Our Children's Trust.
The group noted that the federal government's efforts to block a case in which young people are claiming the right to be protected from planetary heating and from diseases and premature death caused by pollution from fossil fuel infrastructure have gone on so long that the case's youngest plaintiff, who was eight when Juliana was filed, "can now drive and has spent more than half his life as a plaintiff waiting for trial in the face of the most aggressive litigation tactics ever to come out of the Department of Justice."
In federal civil cases that go to trial, a trial begins an average of 27 months from the case's first filing. Juliana was filed 109 months ago.
The writ of mandamus petition is necessary to correct the 9th Circuit's "overreach," said chief legal counsel Julia Olson. "Upholding these principles of fair process is vital for maintaining trust in our judicial system, regardless of what the justices may think about the merits of the case."
The petition was filed a day after Our Children's Trust sent a letter to the Biden administration asking officials to engage in meaningful settlement talks. Nearly 350,000 people signed petitions asking the administration to meet the demand, and the signatures were delivered Wednesday by 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben and Jerome Foster II, the youngest ever White House environmental justice adviser.
"Our ability to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution harming our planet and our children are fundamental freedoms we risk losing," said McKibben, calling on the Biden administration to take the opportunity "to show [its] commitment to climate action, to youth, and to the future!"
"We will keep fighting for climate justice," said one plaintiff, "but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
A panel of three Trump-appointed judges on Wednesday granted the Biden Justice Department's request to have a landmark youth climate case dismissed, another setback for a long-running effort to hold the U.S. government accountable for damaging the planet and violating the rights of younger generations.
The order handed down by a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel instructs an Oregon district court to toss Juliana v. United States for lack of standing, siding with the Justice Department's emergency petition for a writ of mandamus—which the DOJ itself describes as "an extraordinary remedy" that "should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance."
Julia Olson, co-executive director of Our Children's Trust, a public interest law firm backing the youth plaintiffs, said in a statement Wednesday that "the Biden administration was wrong to use an emergency measure to stop youth plaintiffs from having their day in court."
"The real emergency is the climate emergency," said Olson. "This emergency was not created by these young people, who have just been stripped of their fundamental constitutional rights by one of the highest courts in our country. Children deserve access to justice."
Calling the 9th Circuit decision "tragic and unjust" and "wrong on the law," Olson said the legal fight is "not over" and stressed that President Joe Biden "can still make this right by coming to the settlement table."
"We will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
Juliana v. United States was brought in 2015 by 21 young Americans who argued the federal government has violated their "fundamental constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property" by continuing to allow the extraction of fossil fuels despite knowing their central role in destructive planetary heating.
Three consecutive administrations have worked aggressively to prevent a trial, deploying emergency legal tactics to delay and derail the youth-led case even as climate impacts became increasingly devastating in the U.S. and around the world.
Mat dos Santos, general counsel of Our Children's Trust, warned last month that "it's a mistake" for the Biden administration to "take this position in an election year, especially when young voters continue to be more and more disenchanted with the current administration and the permitting of big fossil fuel projects."
"This is an opportunity for the administration to do right by young people," he added.
Earlier this year, just before parties to the case were set to receive trial dates from a federal judge in Oregon, the Biden Justice Department filed a motion to stay the case and then another to have it tossed, drawing outrage from the youth plaintiffs. Dozens of members of Congress have weighed in on the side of the plaintiffs, arguing they should be allowed a trial to present their arguments and evidence.
Avery McRae, one of the plaintiffs, said in response to the 9th Circuit order on Wednesday that "every time we get a decision as devastating as this one, I lose more and more hope that my country is as democratic as it says it is."
"I have been pleading for my government to hear our case since I was 10 years old, and I am now nearly 19," said McRae. "A functioning democracy would not make a child beg for their rights to be protected in the courts, just to be ignored nearly a decade later. I am fed up with the continuous attempts to squash this case and silence our voices."
Another plaintiff, Nathan Baring, said that "we will keep fighting for climate justice, but this is another dark day for protecting young people from climate harm imposed by their government."
"These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs."
As the Biden administration seeks to derail a historic youth-led climate lawsuit against the U.S. government, plaintiffs in the suit—some of them now in their mid-to-late 20s—on Thursday moved to block the Department of Justice from further delaying the case.
Plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States filed a challenge to the Biden administration's bid for a stay in the case, calling the Justice Department's latest petition for a writ of mandamus "nothing short of shocking."
The DOJ's Justice Manual "provides that a writ of mandamus is an 'extraordinary remedy, which should only be used in exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency or public importance,' the plaintiffs' filing notes. "The only emergency in this case is the climate emergency that defendants created and the Department of Justice prolongs with further delays."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018."
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz—a longtime backer of the plaintiffs—filed a declaration supporting their motion. Lambasting the DOJ's claim that the agency is "irreparably harmed" by having to dedicate human and financial resources to the trial, Stiglitz wrote that "to suggest the harm to children's health and homes and constitutional rights is worth less than the money the government has to spend to litigate a case is to suggest every case could be stayed only because it cost taxpayer dollars to litigate."
"The true irreparable harm is the approximate cost of climate disasters or other climate economic harm since this case began and even since the first trial in this case was stopped in October 2018 and through the end of 2023, along with any projections of the range of harm going forward," Stiglitz added, "as well as the amount the U.S. has spent (and continues to spend) subsidizing the fossil fuel industry."
Originally filed in 2015 when the plaintiffs were between 8 and 19 years old, Juliana v. United States accuses the federal government of violating young people's constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and argues that its actions contributing to the planetary emergency constitute a failure to protect essential public trust resources.
The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all worked to kill the case, delaying trial by years. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the case from going to trial days before it was set to begin. On December 29, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled that the plaintiffs could proceed to trial, which was set to begin January 19. However, on January 18 the DOJ said it would file for a writ of mandamus.
The incessant delays have been accompanied by what the plaintiffs describe as "the most aggressive and discriminatory legal tactics" used against them by the government.
As the plaintiffs' latest filing explains:
These youth have been politically targeted and persecuted, for over eight years, as the enormous power and machine of the Department of Justice singles them out among tens of thousands of other plaintiffs, in an effort to stop our nation's youth from taking the witness stand, when every court to review the Juliana plaintiffs' claims has said that there is life and death at stake, the survival of the nation is at stake, and there is merit to their constitutional claims. All they seek after trial is a declaratory judgment of their rights and the government's wrongs, just as the students in Brown v. Board of Education did 70 years ago.
As Stiglitz concluded in his motion, "The federal government has expended taxpayer money taking the case up on appeal, rather
than allowing it to go to trial."
"The amount of time and money spent over the past six years seeking early appeals and mandamus has been large," he added. "We have already laid out the magnitude of the damages to the youth plaintiffs, their generation, and the public. In economic terms, and for the health of the nation, the balancing of potential harms is clear: This case should finally be decided at trial without further delay."