Ten years ago, 21 young people filed a long shot lawsuit against the federal government, arguing that it wasn’t doing enough to protect them from climate change. Their campaign came to an end this week without a court victory, but having made a different kind of impact: They brought an innovative legal approach to the climate fight that has inspired similar cases, at least two of which have been successful.
The case, Juliana v. United States, has “forever changed the legal paradigm,” said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, which represented the youth. It “ignited the global youth climate movement,” she said, “and forced a reexamination of children’s rights in the context of climate change.”
The plaintiffs argued that, by supporting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the federal government violated their constitutional right to “life, liberty, personal security, dignity, bodily integrity, and their cultural and religious practices.” The case endured fierce pushback from the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered its dismissal twice — once in 2020 and again in May 2024.
On Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to reinstate the complaint, ruling that the youth had not shown that they have standing to sue the government. That dashed the last remaining hope that the suit could move forward.
Although Juliana wasn’t the first youth-led climate lawsuit — six were filed worldwide between 2011 and 2015 — it precipitated a rapid increase in such cases. By one count from the nonprofit ClimaTalk, young people filed 18 cases between 2016 and 2020 and at least another half dozen since then. Like Juliana, many argued that governments have an obligation to address climate change to defend individual freedoms, such as the right to life or to a healthy environment.
Michael Gerrard, founder and faculty director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said Juliana made clear that U.S. “federal courts are not going to embrace a constitutional right to a stable climate system” — a point Judge Andrew Hurwitz of the Ninth Circuit made when he noted in a 2020 opinion that “the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.” For that reason, Gerrard said, such cases may fare better in states that have written environmental rights into their constitutions.
Those states include Montana and Hawaiʻi, where Our Children’s Trust has won landmark victories. The first came in Montana when a judge ruled that the 16 youth who sued the state over its support of the fossil fuel industry have a constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.” The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in December when it ruled that the state must consider climate impacts when reviewing fossil fuel projects.
Last June, Our Children’s Trust reached a historic settlement with the Hawaiʻi Department of Transportation that requires it to decarbonize transportation by 2045. The unprecedented agreement also mandates that the agency work to mitigate climate change, align its investments and clean energy goals, and plant at least 1,000 trees annually. Mesina D., one of the 13 plaintiffs in the case, attributed that victory to “the blueprint laid by the Juliana youth plaintiffs.”
“Thanks to these 21 Americans, young people everywhere now know they can raise their voices and demand the protection of their constitutional rights to life and liberty,” she said in a statement.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Many of them are doing just that. Olson said she’s helping Our Children’s Trust litigate or develop eight more state-level climate cases. She’s also working with the Juliana plaintiffs to decide whether to bring their case before an international venue like the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which could issue a nonbinding, but nevertheless symbolic, decision. That would mirror a strategy 16 children attempted in 2019 when they brought a climate change petition against five countries under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (The U.N. told them in 2021 to begin by suing their native countries and return if they lost.)
That’s not to say anyone’s given up on federal action. Because the Ninth Circuit dismissed the case without prejudice, the plaintiffs are free to try again. “These claims are not closed by any means,” Olson said. Our Children’s Trust is already working on a federal case that she hopes to launch soon.
James May, an emeritus law professor and founder of the Global Environmental Rights Institute at Widener University Delaware Law School, agreed that another lawsuit is worth a shot so that constitutional rights claims can be heard on their merits.
He also believes the Juliana case was a “huge missed opportunity” for the Biden administration, which talked a lot about the need to address climate change but whose Justice Department repeatedly asked judges to dismiss the case. The administration “didn’t have to agree that there was a constitutional right that had been violated,” May said, but it could have settled the case by agreeing to take concrete steps to address greenhouse gas emissions.
“The Obama, Trump, Biden, and [second] Trump administrations fought this case harder than any case in American history,” May said. “It sounds so dramatic, but it’s true. Never before has the federal government sought interlocutory relief to the extent it did in this case.”
In a statement, the Department of Justice welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision as the end of what it called a “long saga” that “has tied up the United States in litigation.” Adam Gustafson, the acting assistant attorney general of the department’s environment and natural resources division, also said in the statement that “the Justice Department is enforcing our nation’s environmental laws and safeguarding America’s air, water, and natural resources. Cases like Juliana distract from those enforcement efforts.”
Despite the setback, the work of those 21 youth and the pioneering case they brought radically reshaped the climate fight by engaging young people and more broadly mobilizing the environmental movement. Since 2015, more than 80 members of Congress, including senators Jeff Merkley, Cory Booker, and Bernie Sanders, have endorsed legislation affirming the climate- and environment-related rights of children and filed amicus briefs in Juliana. More than 400 organizations supported the lawsuit, and 350,000 people signed petitions calling for courts to hear it. The case is being taught in law schools, and it has inspired books and the Netflix documentary Youth v. Gov.
“Hats off to the litigants,” May said. “They literally changed the world.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The world’s biggest youth climate lawsuit lost in court, but it ‘changed the world’ on Mar 27, 2025.
The landmark Juliana v. United States sparked a global movement to defend children’s rights to a healthy climate, a campaign that’s already scored two wins. Justice Grist
