District Court Dismisses Another Kids Climate Suit, As Existing Law Requires (Updated)
A suit asking a district court judge to undo every Trump Administration energy policy initiative is dismissed with prejudice; appeal to follow.
On Wednesday, Judge Dale Christensen on the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana "reluctantly" dismissed Lighthiser v. Trump, the latest "kids climate suit," on standing grounds. The only thing surprising about this was that Judge Christensen thought it was necessary to hold an evidentiary hearing, featuring multiple witnesses, before reaching this conclusion. Existing Ninth Circuit precedent--from Juliana v. United States, a prior kids climate case--clearly controlled the outcome.
As with prior kids climate cases, Lighthiser involved youth plaintiffs alleging that the federal government's failure to act more aggressively to control greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change violated the plaintiffs' constitutional rights. In particular, the Lighthiser plaintiffs claimed that the Trump Administration's various energy-related Executive Orders and efforts to undo the Biden Administration's climate policies violate the Due Process Clause of the Constitution and are otherwise unlawful. As Judge Christensen noted, the plaintiffs were "effectively asking that this Court order the United States to return to the environmental policy of the previous administration."
Even had the court found a way around the Ninth Circuit's rejection of standing for similar claims in Juliana, the district court would still have been justified in dismissing the case. The Constitutional claim, like those in other kids climate cases, are audacious (to say the least) and at odds with existing jurisprudence. The Lighthiser plaintiffs were nonetheless able to get multiple prominent academics to serve as expert witnesses in their case.
Judge Christensen dismissed the case with prejudice, as he recognized that the plaintiffs faced more than a pleading problem, and any amendment to their complaint "would be futile." An appeal is likely. A different ultimate outcome is not. Even were the Ninth Circuit to reconsider its Juliana decision en banc, any decision allowing this litigation to proceed would be unlikely to survive a trip to One First Street.
UPDATE: The New York Times suggests the decision has a "silver-lining" for the plaintiffs. As a P.R. matter, that may be true. (Indeed, the NYT story would itself be evidence of that.) As a legal matter, not so much. As I told the Times:
Jonathan Adler, a professor at William & Mary Law School in Williamsburg, Va., who is not involved in the litigation, said the lawsuit was built on "fanciful" theories and its dismissal wasn't particularly surprising. Having young plaintiffs may make cases "a more interesting drama" for publicity reasons, he said, but it doesn't add legal heft. "This litigation is more about the court of public opinion than the courts of law," he said.
I disagree with Daniel Metzger of Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law that the decision offers "very detailed guidance for designing cases that can overcome the challenges this one faced," unless one understands that to mean that the opinion indicated that the only sorts of climate cases that can succeed are those that don't seek sweeping relief or advance broad constitutional claims.