“Exercising my ‘reasoned judgment,’ I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” - U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken
JULIANA v. UNITED STATES
Current Status
For over eight years, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has aggressively filed motions to delay or dismiss this landmark constitutional climate case. On December 29, 2023, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled in favor of the Juliana 21, putting an end to the DOJ’s motions to dismiss the case, and allowing the youth plaintiffs to continue on the path to trial. The parties were set to receive trial dates from Judge Aiken on January 19, 2024.
However, on January 18, 2024, the DOJ filed yet another motion to stay the case, pending their petition to the Ninth Circuit, to which the attorneys for the youth plaintiffs responded by filing an opposition on February 1, 2024. Immediately after, on February 2, 2024, the Biden Administration’s DOJ filed another motion for a stay and a petition for a writ of mandamus at the Ninth Circuit. This is an extreme legal tactic used by the Trump Administration to subvert the normal legal process, prevent the case from proceeding to trial, and silence the voices of young people seeking to highlight the injustice of climate change at the hands of the United States government. The Trump administration used this delay tactic a record six times, and now Biden’s DOJ has followed in their footsteps and filed it for an unprecedented seventh time.
On February 29, 2024, the Ninth Circuit denied the DOJ’s motion to stay, permitting the case to proceed in the District Court and asked the youth plaintiffs and Judge Ann Aiken to respond to the petition for Writ of Mandamus. The youth plaintiffs filed their response to the DOJs outrageous seventh writ of mandamus on March 21, 2024, and now await a ruling from the Court of Appeals decision on the Writ of Mandamus. On March 29, 2024, 30 members of Congress showed their support for the youth plaintiffs by filing an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals asking the court to permit the youth to proceed to trial because the legal measures taken by the DOJ to prevent that from happening vindicate their constitutional rights.
In 2015, 21 young Americans filed their constitutional climate lawsuit, Juliana v. United States, against the U.S. government. Their complaint asserts that, through the government's affirmative actions that cause climate change, it has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.
major moments timeline
The following is a timeline of major moments, filings, and rulings in this case, from 2015 to today (a downloadable, text only, version of this timeline can be found here):