The climate scolds will try almost anything, from defacing priceless works of art to blocking roadways, to further their agenda of sending us back to a pre-industrial lifestyle. Lawfare is on the agenda as well, as we've seen in a number of cases.
One of those cases has just hit a wall, that wall being the United States Supreme Court. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined a petition from a group of young skulls full of mush regarding their attempt to hold the United States government responsible for climate change, thus, somehow, violating their constitutional rights.
The Supreme Court's refusal effectively slams the door on this case.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a petition filed by young climate activists who argued that the federal government’s role in climate change violated their constitutional rights, ending a decadelong legal battle that saw many of the plaintiffs grow from children and teenagers into adults.
The landmark case was filed in 2015 by 21 plaintiffs, the youngest 8 years old. They claimed the U.S. government’s actions encouraging a fossil fuel economy violated their right to a life-sustaining climate.
The case — called Juliana v. United States after one of the activists, Kelsey Juliana — was challenged repeatedly by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, whose lawyers argued it sought to direct federal environmental and energy policies through the courts instead of the political process.
The lawyers for, as the story states, the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations were correct, at least in this sense; this was a naked attempt to circumvent the legislative and executive processes and impose a radical climate agenda by judicial fiat. Fortunately, at least in this case, that attempt has failed.
The plaintiffs wanted the court to hold a trial on whether the U.S. government was violating their fundamental rights to life and liberty by operating a fossil-fuel based energy system.
The case wound its way through the legal system for years. At one point in 2018, a trial was halted by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts just days before it was to begin.
In 2020, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the case dismissed, saying the job of determining the nation’s climate policies should fall to politicians, not judges. But U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene, Oregon, instead allowed the activists to amend their lawsuit and ruled the case could go to trial.
Last year, acting on a request from the Biden administration, a three-judge 9th Circuit panel issued an order requiring Aiken to dismiss the case, and she did. The plaintiffs then sought, unsuccessfully, to revive the lawsuit through their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Should this have gone to trial, the results wouldn't have been to the advantage of anyone in the United States - not even the plaintiffs. While one would expect that a required presentation of actual data to prove the claim that fossil fuels actually do present a violation of these childrens' "fundamental rights to life and liberty," there's little telling what any given jury might do - and one may very well suspect that some jurisdiction-shopping has taken place here, although this was such an egregious waste of time that not even the Ninth Circuit thought it had any merit.
See Also: Case Dismissed: Petulant Climate Kids Get Spanked by 9th Circuit Court of Appeals
Supreme Court Tells White House 'No,' as a Buncha Kids Sue the Government Over Global Warming
The constitutional angle on this is baffling. The plaintiffs allege, as noted above, a violation of their "fundamental rights to life and liberty." Nobody's life or liberty is threatened by the use of fossil fuels, barring something like someone being run over by a fuel-oil truck. This case, on the surface, would seem to have been doomed from the start.
But there are other such cases. One, in Montana, has resulted in a less satisfactory outcome.
Our Children’s Trust has filed climate legal actions on behalf of young people in all 50 states, including active cases in Florida, Utah and Alaska.
In a Montana case, the state Supreme Court in December upheld a landmark climate ruling that said the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting oil, gas and coal projects without regard for global warming, and that regulators must consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions when issuing permits for fossil fuel development.
The case, brought by 16 youth plaintiffs, had gone to trial in state district court in 2023. The Montana Constitution requires agencies to “maintain and improve” a clean environment.
It seems the voters in Montana have some work to do.
In this, as in all things climate-panic-related, the fight never will end. As long as the climate scolds bend every effort to return us to the Stone Age, the controversy will go on. But at least, for now, we have one win in the courts - and maybe, just maybe, a valuable precedent.
