The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a case brought by minors against the federal government, looking to get a response to climate change.
The legal issue, brought forward by Our Children’s Trust representing 21 minors, argued they have standing — or sufficient legal injury — to sue the federal government for allowing fossil fuel usage and thus damaging them through resulting climate change.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled they did not.
“Plaintiffs claim government policies and practices perpetuating a fossil fuel energy system … have unconstitutionally caused and continue to measurably worsen already-hazardous atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gas pollution, depriving Plaintiffs of their fundamental rights to life, liberty, personal security, dignity, bodily integrity, and their cultural and religious practices,” the youths’ petition read.
The long-shot litigation has been pending in the courts for nearly a decade after it was originally filed in 2015.
The case, Juliana v. United States, would have required four justices to vote in favor of hearing it.
The court did not comment on its denial.
