Supreme Court Tells White House 'No,' as a Buncha Kids Sue the Government Over Global Warming

 

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected the White House’s request to stop proceedings in a landmark environmental lawsuit.

The suit, known as Juliana v. United States in lower courts, was brought by young people engaged in the fight against climate change. The litigation is currently in the deposition and evidence-gathering phase.

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Though the nation’s highest court denied the Trump administration’s plea, it did offer criticisms of the case in a notice to an Oregon District Court where the suit is pending:

“The breadth of respondents’ claims is striking…and the justiciability of those claims presents substantial grounds for difference of opinion.”

The Justice Department had previously asked the Oregon court and San Francisco’s 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop the discovery period of the case. Failing in both instances, the DoJ turned to the Supreme Court.

The suit was filed in 2015 by climate activist James Hansen, on behalf of 21 children and young adults. It charged that the government needed to take greater action to stifle global warming.

I’ll say that again: a bunch of kids are suing the federal government.

Yes — it’s that stupid.

During the discovery process, officials have made numerous attempts to halt the case.

Last month, the DoJ wrote the following to the Supreme Court:

“This suit is an attempt to redirect federal environmental and energy policies through the courts rather than through the political process, by asserting a new and unsupported fundamental due process right to certain climate conditions.”

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That makes absolutely perfect sense.

Continuing:

“Absent relief from the Ninth Circuit or this Court, the government will be forced to participate in a highly compacted period of discovery and trial preparation followed by a 50-day trial, all of which will itself violate bedrock limitations on agency decisionmaking and the judicial process.”

So: a left-wing activist, rather than pursuing political change in the proper way, is going to tie up the court and spend tax payers’ money — under the guise of being the voice of the children on a debatable scientific topic — so the government can tell him to go back and pursue political change in the proper way.

The 9th Circuit rejected the plea thusly:

“We denied the government’s first mandamus petition, concluding that it had not met the high bar for relief at that stage of the litigation. … No new circumstances justify this second petition, and we again decline to grant mandamus relief.”

If Hansen can essentially accomplish legislation (which falls within the purview of Congress), what’s to stop every other process from getting rewired? Perhaps Hillary Clinton can file a suit claiming she’d make a better president — goodness knows she’d love to (see her desperate attempts at relevance here and here).

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Good grief.

Thank you for reading! Please sound off in the Comments section below. How do YOU see this going? Do you think the suit should’ve been allowed to get this far? Please let us all know.

For something (a little bit) totally different, please check out my articles on Podesta’s claim that Comey blew the election for Clinton, Alec Baldwin for President, and DeadPool 2 and what it means.

Find all my RedState work here.

And as always, follow Alex Parker on Twitter and Facebook.

 

 

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