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U.S. Supreme Court

Climate change case that ‘ignited a movement’ ends with Supreme Court’s cert denial

By Debra Cassens Weiss

March 25, 2025, 2:01 pm CDT

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to revive a climate change lawsuit filed on behalf of 21 youths who contended that the government is a trustee of the environment and has a duty to preserve it.

The Supreme Court denied cert in Juliana v. United States, report Law360, Reuters, the New York Times, the Oregon Capital Chronicle and E&E News by Politico.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco had tossed the case in a 2020 opinion that said the issue should be taken to the political branches of government, rather than the courts. In May, the appeals court said a revised suit had not cured standing issues that prevented courts from deciding the case.

The name plaintiff in the suit, filed in 2015, is Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana, who is now 29 years old and a teacher in Oregon, according to the New York Times.

The U.S. Department of Justice said in a March 24 press release it has defended the case across three presidential administrations.

“The U.S. Supreme Court’s cert denial brings this long saga to a conclusion,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the DOJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, in the press release.

The case was filed on behalf of the children by the nonprofit group Our Children’s Trust. Julia Olson, the group’s chief legal counsel, said in a March 24 statement the suit’s impact “cannot be measured by the finality of this case alone.”

“Juliana has ignited a movement and created a powerful legal framework for future generations to assert their constitutional rights in the face of the climate crisis,” she said.

In one success for the group in late 2024, the Montana Supreme Court struck down a state law banning consideration of greenhouse gas emissions in fossil-fuel-permitting decisions. The state supreme court cited a state constitutional provision that guarantees a “clean and healthful environment.” The case was Held v. Montana.

In a second case in 2024, Hawaii agreed to cut emissions of carbon dioxide in its transportation system in a settlement with Our Children’s Trust.

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Two of the Supreme Court’s stalwart conservative justices railed against the Court’s majority for not allowing Alabama and a coalition of Republican-led states to step in and attempt to block dozens of climate-change lawsuits filed by states led by Democrats against energy companies.

California, Connecticut, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have filed over two dozen lawsuits against Exxon Mobil, BP, Chevron and other oil companies seeking to hold them responsible for deceiving customers about the risks posed by fossil fuels. The particularities of the lawsuits vary, as each raises a set of allegations arising under the laws of the relevant state.

In general though, the lawsuits charge that the companies have known for decades that greenhouse gas emissions from use of fossil fuels would contribute to climate change, and that the companies failed to warn consumers and used deceptive marketing practices that maximized profit, tricked consumers, and harmed the environment.

California was the first to file one of these lawsuits in 2023. At the time, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, said the energy industry has been lying to citizens for over half a century. Newsom also said oil companies should be held accountable for “wildfires wiping out entire communities, toxic smoke clogging our air, deadly heat waves, record-breaking droughts parching our wells.”

Alabama and 18 other Republican-run states sought to block the climate change lawsuits on the basis that California and the others were unconstitutionally attempting to dictate interstate energy policy beyond their own borders via the use of tort lawsuits. The states argue that this practice infringes on the federal government’s exclusive authority to regulate interstate emissions. The group requested to file a complaint directly with the Supreme Court as a dispute between states themselves, invoking the Court’s rarely-used original jurisdiction.

California and the other defendant states challenged the filing and argues that the arguments Alabama and the others were seeking to raise could be raised by the energy companies in the climate change lawsuits themselves. In its brief, the California group argued that “Alabama’s desire to protect those private defendants from liability is not the kind of sovereign concern that warrants an exercise of this court’s original jurisdiction.”

WASHINGTON – The Department of the Interior, through the Bureau of Land Management, today announced nearly $18 million in new investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to ensure the ready source of native seeds to combat climate change and enhance landscape resilience. This investment from the Inflation Reduction Act – the largest climate investment in history – helps advance the Department’s new National Seed Strategy Keystone Initiative, which Secretary Deb Haaland unveiled during remarks at the National Native Seed Conference.   

“A reliable, abundant and diverse supply of native seeds is foundational to ensuring that the ecosystems we all cherish can thrive for current and future generations,” said Secretary Deb Haaland. “The new initiative we are launching today, supported by historic resources from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, will help ensure we get the right seeds, in the right place, at the right time to restore our public lands and bolster climate resilience.”  

Native plant communities across the U.S. are being lost every day from habitat loss and other climate related impacts, such as longer wildfire seasons and other extreme weather events. As these plant populations are lost, so too are the ecosystem services they provide, increasing the risk of erosion, the establishment of non-native and invasive species, and additional ecological damage.   

Collecting, producing and procuring native seeds is critical for restoring native vegetation on public lands, and special facilities are required to store seeds and safeguard their genetic diversity. The funding and newly launched National Seed Strategy Keystone Initiative will formalize the Department’s ambitious goals to invest in the infrastructure, tools, research and labor needed for a robust native seed supply chain, including by expanding Tribal greenhouse facilities, assisting local farmers in transitioning from high-water crops to low-water native plant crops, connecting with underserved communities in native seed collection via the Seeds of Success program, and increasing regional seed production capacity.     

“Nature has spent thousands of years designing plants that fit in place, so we can’t do better than to use that instruction – native seed – in our restoration efforts,” said BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. “Native seeds stand a better chance of long-term success.”  

Through President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Department is stewarding an overall $2 billion over five years in new investments to put people to work restoring our nation’s lands and waters. This includes nearly $45 million in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and annual appropriations already disbursed to support the expansion of the native seed supply chain, including through more seed collection teams and seed cleaning partnerships.   

That funding is helping advance projects that are restoring white bark pine trees, which define some of the most treasured high-elevation western landscapes; converting 500 acres of degraded rangelands in Colorado to short grass prairie and sage shrubland; and working with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribe in Montana to upgrade and expand the Tribe’s greenhouse facilities to improve its ability to grow native seedlings for regional restoration efforts.  

To guide these historic investments, in April 2023, the Department unveiled the Restoration and Resilience Framework to catalyze coordination and drive transformational outcomes across our existing programs and initiatives, including through a commitment to nine keystone conservation initiatives which address climate change impacts, restore healthy lands and waters and enhance communities’ quality of life.     

The National Seed Strategy Keystone Initiative builds on the past 25 years of native seed collection, research and development, including a recent partnership among the BLM, National Park Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to coordinate on Seeds of Success collections. This is the next step in building a restoration economy in rural communities across the United States, while safeguarding biological diversity.    

With investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda to implement the National Seed Strategy, the Department is also advancing the Biden-Harris administration’s National Climate Resilience Framework and the America the Beautiful initiative, a nationwide effort to conserve, connect and restore the lands, waters, and wildlife upon which we all depend.