A federal judge has scrapped a lawsuit launched by California youth to hold EPA accountable for planet-warming emissions.
The order marks the second time in around a week that a court has tossed out a kids’ climate case. Last Wednesday, a federal appeals court dismissed the landmark Juliana v. United States lawsuit, filed in 2015, which said the U.S. government’s reliance on oil and gas violates young people’s constitutional right to a livable climate.
Judge Michael Fitzgerald of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on Wednesday cited the ruling that shut down Juliana as he tossed out similar claims filed against EPA last year. The judge found that the young California climate activists lacked standing to bring their lawsuit against the agency because their concerns cannot be fixed by a court.
“Plaintiffs’ claimed injuries include ‘a lifetime of harms and hardship,'” wrote Fitzgerald, an Obama appointee. But, he added, just as in Juliana, young challengers in Genesis B. v. EPA “failed to demonstrate” how a court ruling finding that the government violated their rights “is likely to remedy these alleged injuries.”
