Revive Youth Climate Suit, Members of Congress Tell Ninth Cir.

Members of Congress urged the full Ninth Circuit to reconsider the Juliana v. US youth climate lawsuit a panel dismissed in May.

In an amicus brief submitted to the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, senators and representatives wrote that the court should grant the plaintiffs’ request for a full bench of judges to review and reverse the writ of mandamus the panel issued dismissing the case.

The effort was led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), and signed by 41 other members of Congress, including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

“Since youth cannot vote, they depend upon each branch of government to act in their best interests when exercising authority,” the brief said. “Sadly, at this time, each branch is betraying the intergenerational trust bestowed upon them for ‘our Posterity’ in the face of the climate crisis.”

The brief was submitted alongside four other friend-of-the-court filings from law professors, children’s and climate rights scholars, the UC Irvine Law School Civil Rights Litigation Clinic, and the UCLA Human Rights Litigation Clinic, according to a release from Our Children’s Trust, the legal nonprofit representing the plaintiffs.

In their filing, the members of Congress criticized the Biden administration for its efforts to shut down the case, including its successful petition for writ of mandamus that led to the case being dismissed.

“The executive branch should cease its extraordinary and oppressive efforts” to “silence Youth Plaintiffs’ efforts to vindicate their Constitutional rights,” the members wrote.

Juliana v. US was originally filed in 2015 by 21 young people who argued the federal government’s support for fossil fuel production, the primary driver of climate change, violated their constitutional rights. The case was first dismissed in 2020 but came back to life when Judge Ann Aiken of the US District Court for the District of Oregon, who is is overseeing the lower court proceedings, allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint. Aiken dismissed the amended complaint last month for lack of standing after the appeals court ordered her to do so.

The case is United States v. U.S. Dist. Court for the Dist. of Or., 9th Cir., No. 24-684, amicus brief 6/27/24.