Twenty-two plaintiffs between ages seven and 25 allege government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Twenty-two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration<\/a> over its anti-environment<\/a> executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health, argue the plaintiffs, who are between the ages of seven and 25 and hail from the heavily climate-impacted states of Montana, Hawaii, Oregon, California and Florida. They also say officials\u2019 emissions-increasing and science-suppressing orders have violated the state-created danger doctrine, a legal principle meant to prevent government actors from inflicting injury upon their citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAt its core, this suit is about the health of children, it\u2019s about the right to life, it\u2019s about the right to form families,\u201d said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children\u2019s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit. \u201cWe all have constitutional rights, and if we don\u2019t use our constitution \u2013 if we walk away from it and we walk away from our youth \u2013 we will not have a democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lawsuit specifically targets three of the slew of pro-fossil fuel executive orders Trump has signed during his second term. Among them are two day-one Trump moves to declare a \u201cnational energy emergency\u201d and \u201cunleash American energy\u201d, and another April order aimed at \u201creinvigorating\u201d the domestic production of coal \u2013 the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They also led agencies to stymy renewable energy production and to suppress climate research and data, flaunting congressional environmental protections, the lawsuit argues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The litigation is the latest in a series of youth-led climate cases brought by the non-profit law firm Our Children\u2019s Trust. The lead plaintiff in the new case, 19-year-old Eva Lighthiser, was also a plaintiff in the firm\u2019s Held v Montana lawsuit, which notched a landmark win<\/a> in 2023 when a judge ruled that the state\u2019s pro-fossil fuel policies violated their rights under the state\u2019s constitution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTrump\u2019s fossil fuel orders are a death sentence for my generation,\u201d said Lighthiser.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lighthiser has already seen the impacts of the climate crisis in her life: flood-related destruction to roads and bridges one summer forced her family to sell their house in Livingston, Montana.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe effects of climate change cause Eva persistent stress and anxiety about her future,\u201d the lawsuit says. \u201cEvery additional ton of [greenhouse gas] pollution and increment of heat Defendants cause will cause Eva more harm.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other plaintiffs in the new case previously participated in other Our Children\u2019s Trust lawsuits, including one that reached a historic settlement<\/a> in Hawaii last year; another filed by Florida youth against their state government; and a third, the federal case Juliana v US, which was filed a decade ago and dismissed without prejudice last year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lighthiser said Trump\u2019s re-election last year felt \u201clike such a heavy thing\u201d. In the wake of her 2023 win in the Montana lawsuit, she said it felt like taking \u201cone step forward, three steps back\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n