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.
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.
Case history
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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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, . 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. 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. 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, . 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, , 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.
Initial hearings
The present case was filed in August 2015 with the United States District Court for the District of Oregon, and was assigned to judge Ann Aiken, who was then the chief judge of the court. The 21 youths, ranging from 8 to 19 at the time of filing, received pro bono representation from Our Children's Trust, and had support of climatologist James Hansen, acting as a "guardian for future generations" in the case filings. (Hansen's granddaughter Sophie Kivlehan was one of the named plaintiffs.) The youths were selected by Our Children's Trust as they thought they were able to demonstrate immediate "concrete injury" due to climate change, such as having their homes wiped out by excessive flooding, rising sea levels, and desertification which were tied to climate change.
The case was filed against President Barack Obama and several agencies within the executive branch, and sought confirmation that their constitutional and public trust rights had been violated by the government's actions, and sought an order to enjoin the defendants from continued violation of their rights and to develop a plan to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. Among their arguments, the youths' attorneys asserted that the lack of governmental action on climate change discriminated against the youths' generation, since they would be most impacted by climate change but have no voting rights to influence that.
Three fossil fuel industry groups, the American Petroleum Institute, American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, and the National Association of Manufacturers, initially intervened in the case as defendants, joining the U.S. government in trying to have the case dismissed. Pre-trial hearings were held in March 2016 before U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Coffin. The U.S. Department of Justice argued that there was "no constitutional right to a pollution-free environment", and that the court system was not the proper venue to effect such changes. Coffin ruled in April 2016 recommending that both motions to dismiss were denied; Coffin found that while the case was "unprecedented", it had sufficient merit to continue. Coffin's decision was upheld by Judge Aiken, who ruled in November 2016 that the right to "a climate system capable of sustaining human life" was a fundamental right similar to gay marriage as decided by the recent Supreme Court case, Obergefell v Hodges. According to Michael Gerrard, the director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, "this decision goes further than any other court ever has in declaring a fundamental obligation of government to prevent dangerous climate change", and Judge Aiken's decision that there might be a constitutional right to a sound environment was the first such ruling ever from a federal court. Preliminary trial dates were set for 2017.
Following the 2016 election, the federal defendants filed a response to the plaintiff's complaint on January 13, 2017, one week before President Obama left office. In their response, the federal defendants denied that they had caused climate change or specific climate change impacts such as increased temperatures, drought conditions, warmer water temperatures, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification. About a month later, the complaint was amended to make the lead defendant newly elected President Donald Trump. In the months that followed, the fossil fuel industry groups requested that they be removed from the case, believing that the Department of Justice under the Trump Administration would vigorously defend the case, unlike the Obama Administration. The National Association of Manufacturers, one of the fossil fuel groups, said that "as the dynamics have changed over the last several months, we no longer feel that our participation in this case is needed to safeguard industry and our workers". In late June 2017, Judge Coffin released the fossil fuel industry defendants from the case, as well as establishing a trial date on February 5, 2018, before Judge Aiken.
Government objections In early June 2017, the Department of Justice filed a motion requesting that Judge Aiken rule on its prior motion for an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit of Judge Aiken's November 2016 decision on the justiciability of the plaintiffs' claims, by June 9 or the department would directly seek a writ of mandamus regarding the issue in the Ninth Circuit. Judge Aiken denied the motion requesting the interlocutory appeal on June 8, leading the government to petition the Ninth Circuit for a writ of mandamus on June 11. The government's petition argued that the Ninth Circuit needed to act to correct "multiple and clear errors of law in refusing to dismiss an action that seeks wholesale changes in federal government policy based on utterly unprecedented legal theories". The government also argued that the pre-trial discovery phase would cause the government harm due to the volume of data and evidence they would need to provide.
After receiving responses from the plaintiffs, the Ninth Circuit opted in November 2017 to hear oral arguments before making their decision. These arguments were held on December 11, 2017, in front of Judges Sidney Thomas, Alex Kozinski, and Marsha Berzon. A few days later, Judge Kozinski stepped down from the Ninth Circuit. On December 21, 2017, Judge Michelle Friedland was appointed to replace Kozinski. Due to the Ninth Circuit's hearing, the planned trial date at District Court was put on hold. On March 7, 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously rejected the requested writ of mandamus in a decision by Judge Thomas. The District Court trial was then rescheduled to start October 29, 2018.
The government then petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States requesting a stay to delay the trial. On July 30, 2018, the Supreme Court issued a brief order, denying the government's request for a stay as premature but expressing skepticism about the lawsuit, as well as noting that the breadth of the plaintiffs' claims was "striking" and requesting that the District Court issue a prompt ruling on the government's motions challenging the overall justiciability of those claims.
Following the Supreme Court's order, the government again presented two motions to dismiss the case to Judge Aiken in July 2018. One motion stated that the case, in addressing multiple government agencies, violated the Administrative Procedure Act, while the other motion challenged the youths' standing in the case. While Judge Aiken said she would rule promptly on the motions, she had not issued her decision by October 5, causing the government again to request an emergency stay from the Ninth Circuit via a second writ of mandamus, asking them to delay the case until Aiken ruled on the two motions. On October 15, Judge Aiken ruled on the two motions, denying both. Aiken also removed President Trump as a defendant in the case without prejudice, meaning that he could be re-added to the case at a later stage, and reaffirmed the trial start date of October 29.