Too bad they didn’t ask the kiddies if they have given up their own use of fossil fuels and made their lives carbon neutral
Ninth Circuit Court denies young Americans’ lawsuit challenging Trump’s handling of climate change
A legal effort by 22 young Americans to curb atmosphere-warming greenhouse gas emissions experienced a major setback Tuesday. The Ninth Circuit Court rejected a lawsuit seeking to reverse President Donald Trump’s efforts to expand fossil fuel development.
In a 10-page opinion, the Ninth Circuit wrote that the climate change-related injuries the plaintiffs reported in their litigation bear too tenuous a tie to a trio of executive orders they sought to reverse with the lawsuit.
Those executive orders, issued in the early days of Trump’s second term, directed federal agencies to “unleash” American energy, use emergency powers to expedite permitting for fossil fuel extraction, and identify and rescind actions that place an “undue burden [on] domestic energy resources” such as oil, gas, hydropower and biofuels.
Drawing extensive parallels between Juliana v. United States, a decade-long lawsuit seeking a federal climate response plan, the court foregrounded separation-of-power concerns in its opinion. The judges in 2024 wrote that the judicial branch lacks the power to grant or enforce the federal policy changes the plaintiffs requested.
There’s no law requiring any of what Trump killed, and what he killed were Executive Orders, which any president can kill. Biden rescinded 70-80 of Trump’s EOs. If the yutes are so concerned they should get all their fellow yutes to go carbon neutral.
“Similar to the injunction requested in Juliana, the injunction Plaintiffs seek would require extensive judicial supervision of executive branch actions related to energy policy,” the trio of appellate judges wrote. “Indeed, Plaintiffs explicitly seek to undo everything from staffing reductions, to the revocation of research grants, to anticipated rule changes, to the type of language the current administration has used on government websites. To assign such policy-laden choices to one district court would invert the ‘common understanding what activities are appropriate to legislatures, to executives, and to courts.’”
That’s not even counting that the Supreme Court ruling on Trump v. CASA, Inc, which, while it was meant for district judges, would also apply to circuit courts making nationwide rulings. If they had ruled for the kiddies it would only have applied in the 9th Circuit Court’s jurisdiction.
Julia Olson, co-director of Our Children’s Trust, the Oregon-based nonprofit that represented the plaintiffs in the litigation, maintains that the executive orders are unconstitutional and expressed frustration with the court’s decision not to examine that component of the litigation.
She can maintain that all she wants, but, her little astroturfed lawsuit shamefully using easily pliable children lost, because there is nothing in the Constitution stopping those EOs, nor in federal law.
The only EOs that people love are the ones they agree with, all others suddenly are “unconstitutional”.