These Teens Just Won a Victory Over the Trump Administration in Court

The plaintiffs are arguing that the government’s actions have caused climate change which violates their constitutional rights.

Eighteen of the 21 kids and young adults suing Trump, their lawyers, and supporters pose for a photo outside the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco.Amy Thomson

“We the people are ready to leave,” sang a small choir of climate activists in downtown San Francisco, “’cause the White House makin’ it hard to breathe.” 

That was the rallying cry in support of the 21 plaintiffs, ages 22 and younger, who are suing the federal government for causing climate change damages and thereby violating their constitutional rights. Last year, on December 11, a crowd of around 100 people gathered across the street from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco where oral arguments were being heard as the government defendants tried to argue the case should not go to trial.

But the court ruled in favor of the young plaintiffs last month, and on Thursday, a US magistrate judge set a trial date for October 29 in Eugene, Ore. 

We’ve got our track shoes on and we’re ready to get this case all set for trial,” Phil Gregory, lead co-counsel for the plaintiffs, told Mother Jones.

The plaintiffs in Juliana v. the United States are arguing that the US government has known for decades that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering the planet. By allowing the production of fossil fuels to continue, the lawsuit alleges, the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to life, liberty, and property is being violated, in addition to their public trust rights. They are supported by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit group that works to amplify young voices demanding a stable climate and by Earth Guardians, an organization with a similar mission that is also a plaintiff on the case. 

That the plaintiffs are young is a big part of their legal argument. As the government continues to neglect the consequences of climate change, they say, their future selves—and their future children—will suffer. 

“This has to be one of those moments of people coming together uniting and fighting for justice,” said 17-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, one of the plaintiffs and Earth Guardian’s youth director, outside the courthouse in December. “This is about more than politics and the environment; it’s about our futures.”

The goal of the suit is to establish a climate recovery plan, Gregory says, based on the best available science, including replacing fossil fuel energy with renewables. “We have an energy addiction,” he says. “Our Congress and President—and not just this President—have done nothing to take the necessary steps to halt the state-created danger.”

The case’s origins date back to the Obama administration, when Julia Olson, an attorney from Eugene, Ore., gathered a group of young climate advocates and additional attorneys to file the suit against the government in 2015. Trump’s team inherited this case and made an attempt to stop it last year. Over the summer, the US legal team asked the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to review a 2016 decision that allowed the case to move forward, known as “a petition for writ of mandamus.”  The Trump administration argued that preparation for trial—which could uncover scores of documents and communications related to fossil fuel companies—would be an unreasonable burden for the government. In response, the courts agreed to hear the oral arguments. In March, they denied the petition, which paved the way for a trial date.

Gregory says he thinks that the Trump administration will make another attempt to stop the case. He tells Mother Jones that Trump’s team has until June to propose that the case go straight to the Supreme Court, where the team could file a similar petition, asking that the recent decision allowing the case to proceed to trial be reviewed. “The federal government is scared to put climate science before a federal court,” he says. “I don’t think [President] Trump and [Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott] Pruitt have the guts to let a judge decide this issue.”

At the December rally in San Francisco, the youngest plaintiff, Levi Draheim, took the mic. The 10-year-old lives on a barrier island in Florida. He told the crowd that after Hurricane Irma, when catastrophic winds tore through Carribean Islands and southwest Florida in September, his street was underwater. “I have been affected by climate change,” he said. “If we don’t stop climate change then I might not have a home when I’m older.”

More Mother Jones reporting on Climate Desk

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate