Judge dismisses young climate activists’ lawsuit challenging Trump on fossil fuels

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit from young climate activists seeking to block President Donald Trump’s executive orders promoting fossil fuels and discouraging renewable energy.

The activists said the orders would worsen global warming, threatening their lives and violating their constitutional rights.

Attorneys for the U.S. Department of Justice and more than a dozen states had urged Judge Dana Christensen to dismiss the case.

The plaintiffs included youths who were victorious in a landmark climate trial against the state of Montana. During a two-day hearing last month in Missoula, the activists and experts who testified on their behalf described Trump’s actions to boost drilling and mining and discourage renewable energy as a growing danger to children and the planet.

Christensen said in a 31-page order that the plaintiffs had shown “overwhelming evidence” that climate change was affecting them and will worsen as a result of Trump’s orders.

But the judge said their request to block Trump’s orders was an “unworkable request” that would have required scrutiny of every climate-related action taken since the Republican came into office. Christensen said that instead of the courts, the plaintiffs must make their case “to the political branches or the electorate.”

White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said the ruling marked a victory “not just for the Trump Administration, but for the American people who voted for President Trump to unleash America’s energy dominance, lower prices, and protect our national security.”

“President Trump saved our country from Joe Biden’s wildly unpopular Green Energy Scam and he will continue to ‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’,” Rogers added.

The 22 plaintiffs included youths and young adults from Montana and several other states.

Legal experts said the young activists and their lawyers from the environmental group Our Children’s Trust faced long odds. The Montana state constitution declares that people have a “right to a clean and healthful environment.” That language is absent from the U.S. Constitution.

The activists will appeal Wednesday’s ruling, said Julia Olson, chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust.

“Every day these executive orders remain in effect, these 22 young Americans suffer irreparable harm to their health, safety, and future,” Olson said. “The judge recognized that the government’s fossil fuel directives are injuring these youth, but said his hands were tied by precedent.”

A previous federal climate lawsuit in Oregon from Our Children’s Trust went on for a decade before the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider their final appeal this year.

Christensen cited that case in concluding that the plaintiffs in Montana lacked standing to sue the government. That is because they failed to demonstrate their request for judicial intervention was likely to fix their injuries through actions that are within the court’s power, the judge wrote.

“This Court is certainly troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change,” Christensen wrote. “This concern does not automatically confer upon it the power to act.”

Only a few other states, including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, have environmental protections enshrined in their constitutions.

Carbon dioxide, which is released when fossil fuels are burned, traps heat in the atmosphere and is largely responsible for the warming of the climate.

Montana’s Supreme Court upheld the 2023 trial outcome last year, requiring officials to more closely analyze climate-warming emissions. To date, that has yielded few meaningful changes in a state dominated by Republicans.