July 2, 2025: Youth Plaintiffs File Opening Brief at Ninth Circuit

Attorneys for the youth plaintiffs filed an opening brief at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the court to reverse the lower court’s dismissal of their constitutional claims on the basis of standing.  

The plaintiffs’ brief says the district court judge erred in closing the courthouse doors, to children, citing two major U.S. Supreme Court rulings on standing issued in June 2025—Gutierrez v. Saenz and Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA—which Plaintiffs’ lawyers say make this an open and shut case that the children can be heard. In their brief, they point to the children’s economic, physical and mental health injuries and the unequal treatment of them in EPA’s regulatory programs. 

In Diamond Alternative Energy, LLC v. EPA, the Supreme Court ruled that there is a presumption that government policies do what they say they do and that plaintiffs who can show injuries from a policy, even amounting to just one dollar ($1) of loss, have standing to be heard on claims seeking to invalidate those policies.   

In a similar vein, in Gutierrez v. Saenz, the Supreme Court ruled that when a plaintiff seeks “‘a change in [the] legal status’ of the parties” that is sufficient for standing. The Court made it clear that when a plaintiff seeks the end of a government policy that is a barrier to them in protecting their interests, that is good enough for standing.