NY, Sep 28 : In Lighthiser v. Trump, 22 young people are asking a federal court to declare executive orders that “unleash” fossil fuels unconstitutional. They face some of the same challenges that led to the dismissal of another famous climate case.

During a short recess in their first hearing, the young plaintiffs in the Lighthiser v. Trump lawsuit gathered outside the courtroom to dance along to a TikTok video.  They’d been listening to nearly two days’ worth of testimony and legal arguments that began Sept. 16, sitting attentively in their button-down shirts, khakis and one thrift-store purple suit. Five of them had taken the stand themselves, describing how climate change was threatening their futures, then facing cross-examination from U.S. Department of Justice lawyers. It was time to just be kids for a moment.  The 22 youth plaintiffs had their first day in court at a hearing before the U.S. District Court of Montana in Missoula, where they, supported by a slate of expert witnesses, asked Judge Dana L. Christensen to issue a preliminary injunction against three of President Trump’s executive orders designed to “unleash” fossil fuels.

The Department of Justice, along with “intervenors” from 18 state governments and Guam, all asked for the case to be dismissed.  The three executive orders—“Unleashing American Energy,” “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” and “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry”—direct the executive branch to remove burdens to domestic energy production, especially coal, but exclude wind and solar power from those actions. The plaintiffs argued that this acceleration of fossil fuel development harms their physical, mental and economic health. And they spent a good deal of time emphatically asserting that their case was not the same as Juliana v. United States. 

Their success hinges on whether or not the courts agree on that last point.  The two cases have undeniable similarities. Both feature young plaintiffs—Lighthiser’s range from 7 to 25—who allege the federal government is violating their Constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. (Some of the Juliana plaintiffs are now part of the Lighthiser case.) Both were filed by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to climate work. But where Juliana wound its way through the legal system for 10 years before finally being dismissed for lack of standing (the right to bring a case to court) last March, the Lighthiser team hopes this case will hit the mark. 

“Outlining the differences between Juliana and Lighthiser is super-important,” said Miko Vergun, 24, of Oregon, a plaintiff in both cases. “In Juliana, we were trying to ask for a climate recovery plan. And we were also arguing that we had the constitutional right to a stable climate that the federal government was continuously infringing upon. In this case, we’re arguing that the three executive orders that Trump had implemented are infringing on those constitutional rights to life and liberty.”  The hopes of climate activists following the Lighthiser proceedings have been buoyed by the success of another climate suit brought to a Montana courtroom by Our Children’s Trust, Held v. Montana in 2023, which included 15 of the current plaintiffs. But that case was against the state of Montana, whose constitution guarantees the right to “a clean and healthful environment,” which the U.S. Constitution does not do. 

The plaintiffs this time around crafted their request to the court to sidestep the questions about standing that sunk Juliana. To have the legal standing to bring a case in federal court, plaintiffs must prove three things: that they have been harmed; that their harm was caused by the action they’re challenging, which is known as “traceability”; and that the court has the power to address that harm—“redressability.”

In Juliana, the courts ultimately ruled that the judicial branch doesn’t have the power to compel the federal government to adopt a specific energy policy. Lighthiser asks the court for a narrower ruling: a declaration that the three executive orders are unconstitutional.  The plaintiffs who testified at the hearing spoke about how climate change personally affected them. Joseph Lee, 19, of California, described being hospitalized for heatstroke. Avery McRae, 20, who attends college in Florida, testified that hurricanes forced her to evacuate from her campus three times in two years. Californian Jeffrey K. (lawyers withheld his last name because he’s a minor), 11, told the court that worsening wildfire smoke poses a significant risk to him and his younger brother, both of whom have lung conditions. “Unleashing fossil fuels will definitely make the entire environment, heat-wise, air quality-wise, worse,” he said. All five mentioned mental health impacts like fear, anxiety, sadness and uncertainty about their futures.  “[The defendants] really aren’t questioning that the young people are being injured in this case,” said Andrea Rodgers, deputy director of U.S. Strategy for Our Children’s Trust.  But the traceability and redressability standards pose a larger hurdle for the plaintiffs, dragging in thorny questions about the separation of powers between branches of the U.S. government. 

The plaintiffs allege that a slew of recent government actions can be linked to the three executive orders, including the canceling of wind power permits, the extension of the length of time that some coal plants will operate, the dismissing of federal climate scientists and proposals to shut down climate research satellites and rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s critical endangerment finding that is the basis of its regulation of greenhouse gases. Many of those decisions didn’t explicitly mention the three executive orders, but the plaintiffs argue that the orders could be reasonably inferred to have caused those actions.  John Podesta, a former climate advisor to Presidents Biden and Obama, testified at the hearing, “These decisions predictably and directly flow from these orders…These kids are being harmed by this action, and this court can do something about that.”