Young climate advocates doing battle against President Donald Trump’s energy priorities — and the fossil fuel projects the administration advances — will soon have their day in court.
Oral arguments in three youth climate cases — the first of which will take place Wednesday before the Alaska Supreme Court — come as the administration has rolled back regulations aimed at capping greenhouse gas emissions, pushed for expanded oil and gas production and extended lifespans for aging coal plants.
Each of the cases is backed by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based law firm that has scored victories in Montana and Hawaii, but has struggled to convince federal judges that youth have a constitutional right to a healthy environment that can be protected by a court.
A victory for the firm in any of the upcoming cases may be difficult to achieve, but the youth and their attorneys say the cases are key to establishing precedent that future generations should be shielded from environmental harm.
“Young people across the United States and outside of our country are pushing courts and governments to treat climate harm like the rights crisis that it really is,” said Mat dos Santos, co-executive director and general counsel at Our Children’s Trust. “Not a policy preference, not a future problem, but a present constitutional issue.”
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice has pilloried two of the cases that target the administration as “policy advocacy masquerading as litigation” and pushed for their dismissal.
“Baseless threats from radical climate activists will not stop President Trump from implementing his popular and commonsense energy dominance agenda that nearly 80 million Americans voted for,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said of one of the lawsuits targeting Trump’s energy-related executive orders.
The federal government is not party to the case that will be heard Wednesday in the Alaska Supreme Court, but the administration has aggressively boosted the the proposed $44 billion liquefied natural gas project at the heart of the lawsuit, calling the project critical to national security. Eight young Alaskans have argued that the project violates their constitutional right to a liveable climate.
In two other lawsuits that will soon be argued, young activists will fight EPA for underplaying the value of reducing pollution and Trump for handing down directives aimed at boosting fossil fuels.
Here are the details of the three upcoming arguments:
Alaska gas exports
Argument date: March 4Court: Alaska Supreme Court
In Sagoonick v. State of Alaska II, young activists have asked the Alaska Supreme Court to find that laws requiring the state to “advance” and “develop” a $44 billion gas export project are unconstitutional.
They said a lower court got it wrong when it tossed the case on the grounds that the court lacked authority to weigh the competing economic and environmental concerns raised by the project, which would ship LNG from the state’s North Slope to Asian markets. The youth have said it is the duty of the courts to determine whether Alaska’s laws are consistent with constitutional protections.
Sagoonick leans on a dissent from a 2022 decision from the Alaska Supreme Court that rejected a challenge to the state’s support for fossil fuel production. In that dissent, two of the court’s members recognized the right to a healthy climate. The challengers also cited a 2014 finding by the Alaska Supreme Court that youth have standing to sue the state government, even as the court upheld dismissal of a lawsuit from six children who claimed Alaska officials had an obligation to protect the atmosphere.
“This case is building on that foundation,” said Andrew Welle, the lead attorney in the case, who spoke along with dos Santos at a recent webinar Our Children’s Trust held for supporters and donors.
The LNG project includes an 807-mile natural gas pipeline and a terminal designed to export up to 20 million metric tons of gas per year. The project has struggled to attract financing but has the Trump administration’s support and has secured preliminary commitments from several companies to buy its gas.
Alaska will argue that the youth are asking the justices to “supplant the Legislature’s policy choice that advancing an LNG project is in the best interests of Alaskans.”
EPA’s duty to youth
Argument date: March 5Court: 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
In Genesis v. EPA, young climate activists will ask a panel of California-based appellate judges to overturn a lower court’s dismissal of their lawsuit alleging federal environmental regulators have discriminated against children by placing less value on the future benefits of pollution regulations.
The case — filed in December 2023 during the Biden administration — alleges EPA “forged an unlawful path” by failing to keep climate pollution at a level that protects children, who are more vulnerable than adults to the effects of rising temperatures.
EPA policies “effectively value their lives at zero when deciding how much climate pollution to allow in their neighborhoods,” dos Santos said.
The Trump administration has argued that the youth have failed to identify an instance in which EPA relied on discounted benefits, even in part, to justify regulating greenhouse gases less stringently than it might have otherwise.
The lawsuit “thus presents an academic question about regulatory analysis, rather than a justiciable case or controversy,” DOJ lawyers wrote in a recent brief.
“[T]his is not a serious legal case,” DOJ said, adding the lawsuit is a “drain on the resources of the Judicial Branch and the Department of Justice that should not be countenanced.”
Trump’s energy EOs
Argument date: April 13Court: 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
In Lighthiser v. Trump, 22 young people are challenging the president’s sweeping directives to expand fossil fuel development.
On his first day in office, Trump signed two executive orders declaring a “national energy emergency” and directing agencies to “unleash American energy.” A third, signed last April, forced aging coal-burning power plants to stay open beyond their planned retirement dates.
A federal judge in Montana found that the young activists had provided evidence that climate change will get worse and they will be harmed as a result — but ultimately ruled that the court could not turn back the clock to the state of play before the president took office.
Dos Santos said the case “isn’t just about climate policy. It’s about the constitutional limits on presidential power.”
DOJ has argued that the youth are attempting to “micromanage the president’s policy choices” and that the constitutional right to due process “does not guarantee a life-sustaining, stable climate system.”
In its briefing, the government has relied heavily on the 9th Circuit’s 2020 dismissal of Our Children’s Trust’s best-known youth lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, in which the court found the judiciary lacks the power to force the federal government to phase out fossil fuels.
While prior Democratic administrations have pushed back against Juliana and Genesis, a group of Biden officials, including former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and former climate advisers Gina McCarthy and John Podesta, have sided with the youth in Lighthiser.
Unlike in the other youth cases, the former officials said in a recent 9th Circuit brief, the courts have the power to block “unlawful executive actions and have exercised it consistently across administrations.”
