My Voice. My Rights. Our Future: Why this Juliana Plaintiff Continues to Fight for Climate Justice
April 4, 2024
Juliana v. U.S Youth Plaintiff Nathan
In January, United States District Court Judge Ann Aiken delivered a clarion call: she denied the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) motion to dismiss Juliana v. United States. That landmark constitutional climate lawsuit was filed against the federal government by 21 young people across the country, including me.
Judge Aiken recognized the inherent violation of our constitutional rights to life, liberty and property if we cannot safely live in our climate. The young plaintiffs and the US Government “do not disagree that the climate crisis threatens our ability to survive on planet Earth,” she wrote. She noted, “curbing climate change requires an all-hands-on-deck approach,” and thus, the courts, too, have a role to play in saying what U.S. law is.
Our federal government is well aware that its conduct is destroying our planet’s capacity to support human life.
The US is still a net exporter of hydrocarbons and is developing long-term polluting projects around the country as we speak, under the pretense of a “climate-friendly” administration.
And our world is on fire. The predictive climate science of past decades has come alive: in West Coast droughts, in coastal floods and hurricanes, in billion-dollar superstorms, in drowning island nations.
This is a grave injustice to my generation and the future.
Young people are terrified and report record levels of “climate grief” and fear. The political calculations that caused this moment, without the input of young people and future generations, are ill-equipped to pull us out of this deadly spiral.
We must respond. And when government fails to take action in service of our constitutional rights, the courts are our most powerful remedy.
The judiciary has the unique power to “declare what the law is” and has done so at critical moments throughout our nation’s history. Courts declared segregated schools unconstitutional. Courts declared how to protect Tribal fishing rights. Courts declared that everyone has the right to get married regardless of the race or gender of their chosen partner.
In Juliana, this declaratory judgment power is similarly important.
Under Article III of the Constitution, US Courts have the power to declare that government actions that subsidize, lease, permit, sell, transfer, incentivize, and otherwise support nationwide hydrocarbon infrastructure are unconstitutional.
Taken against the known record of clear science that predicted these harms, government support of fossil fuels represents state-created danger. It is hazardous to the life and liberty of young people and future generations.
The courts must exercise their judicial power as our Constitution demands. To ignore these instances of state-created danger “would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government’s knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink,” Judge Aiken wrote.
And yet, across three different administrations, there have been 22 attempts to kill our case without granting us the chance to testify or present evidence at trial.
Among these, seven were petitions for writ of mandamus, an extraordinary legal tactic not used by the Department of Justice in any of its 40,000 cases where the U.S. is a defendant. No other case in the nation has experienced this level of government persecution. My fellow plaintiffs and I just made our final argument in the US Court of Appeals to be heard at trial, and now, it’s in President Biden’s hands.
That is why, on April 21, some of my Juliana co-plaintiffs will stand alongside plaintiffs from other youth-led climate cases and supporters from across the country at a rally in front of the White House demanding climate justice.
We’ll gather on Pennsylvania Avenue and GET LOUD! We’ll demand that President Biden and his DOJ let our case proceed to trial and show him that America’s climate case isn’t just for myself and 20 other co-plaintiffs, but for all current and future generations.
I was 15 years old when Juliana was filed in August 2015. I am now 24 and a post-college, career professional. The world stands in a different place today as we fight for our right to a fair trial to protect our constitutional right to a safe climate. The first constitutional climate trial in U.S. history was won in Montana in 2023 by Our Children’s Trust, the same team bringing Juliana. The next constitutional climate trial will come in June 2024 in Hawaii: Navahine F. v. Hawai’i Department of Transportation, also being brought by Our Children’s Trust. A force of human rights lawyers has begun to rise to meet this legal moment in cases around the globe.
I remember when Juliana felt unique in its legal message, when the constitutional climate litigation world was in its infancy and my co-plaintiffs, all children, pushed a unique strategy. It was an uphill battle to show that our alleged climate harms weren’t mere speculation or future problems. The case in Montana has set a precedent for courts around the world and the federal government knows it. The DOJ’s attempt to silence our voices proves the Administration isn’t prepared to sever ties to the fossil fuel industry and implement tangible systemic change.
But this is about our constitutional right to a livable climate future—and we aren’t giving up.
A trial for the Juliana case will represent a momentous occasion for our global climate system. It will be the moment when our courts choose to claim their equal role in our government system, in the moment when a crisis of government infringement demands it. A Juliana trial will represent the collective work of a global climate movement that refuses to go down lightly. And a Juliana trial will represent the efforts of some heroic lawyering.
President Biden, tell the DOJ: Send Juliana to trial.
Written by Nathan B., Juliana v. U.S. Youth Plaintiff
