Did the Juliana Climate Change Case Reach a Settlement?

The Juliana climate change case did not reach a settlement. After nearly a decade of litigation, the lawsuit ended on March 24, 2025, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the young plaintiffs’ final appeal, leaving in place a Ninth Circuit order that forced the case to be dismissed before it ever went to trial.¹²

Settlement was discussed at one point, but no formal negotiations ever took place. And the case’s ending in U.S. courts was not the end of the plaintiffs’ effort. In September 2025, most of the original plaintiffs took their claims to an international human rights body, keeping the underlying dispute alive on a new stage.

Was a Settlement Ever on the Table?

The closest the case came to settlement talks was in early 2021, after the Ninth Circuit had denied the plaintiffs’ petition for rehearing en banc and the Biden administration had just taken office. Court filings from that period show the government acknowledged that settlement remained possible even while the case was under appeal.¹ Nothing came of that acknowledgment. No formal negotiations materialized, and the litigation continued.

From that point forward the government’s posture was to end the case, not resolve it. The Department of Justice filed seven petitions for writs of mandamus asking the Ninth Circuit to order the district court to dismiss.³ That is the opposite of settlement posture, and it is what ultimately closed the case.

How the Case Actually Ended

Two rulings did the work.

The first came on January 17, 2020, when a Ninth Circuit panel voted 2-1 to reverse the district court and order the case dismissed for lack of Article III standing. Writing for the majority, Judge Hurwitz accepted that the plaintiffs had shown real injuries traceable to federal policy, but held that the remedy they sought, a court-supervised plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions, was beyond the constitutional power of a federal court to grant.⁴ District Judge Josephine Staton dissented, arguing the plaintiffs had standing and the case belonged at trial.

Rather than give up, the plaintiffs asked to amend their complaint and drop the request for a remedial plan entirely. In June 2023 Judge Ann Aiken granted them permission to file a second amended complaint asking only for a declaratory judgment that the federal energy system violated the Constitution.⁵ In December 2023 she denied the government’s motions to dismiss the amended complaint and confirmed the case could go to trial.

The Justice Department went back to the Ninth Circuit. On May 1, 2024, a three-judge panel granted the government’s seventh mandamus petition, ordered the district court to dismiss the case, and prohibited any further amendments.³ In July 2024 the full Ninth Circuit refused to reconsider that order.¹

The Supreme Court declined a mandamus petition in November 2024 and then denied certiorari on March 24, 2025, in Case No. 24-645.¹ The case never reached trial and produced no settlement, no consent decree, and no judgment on the merits.

What the Plaintiffs Had Originally Asked For

Understanding why settlement was so difficult helps explain the outcome. The lawsuit was filed on August 12, 2015, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon by 21 young plaintiffs, then between 8 and 19 years old, represented free of charge by the nonprofit law firm Our Children’s Trust.⁵⁶

They alleged that the federal government had known for more than 50 years that burning fossil fuels was destabilizing the climate but continued to permit, subsidize, and encourage fossil fuel production, violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and breaching a public trust duty to protect the atmosphere.⁷ The original relief they sought was a court order requiring the government to develop and implement a plan to phase out fossil fuel emissions and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million by 2100.⁸

That remedy is what the Ninth Circuit ultimately said no federal court could design. It is also the kind of relief no administration was likely to agree to in a settlement, which is one reason the 2021 opening never turned into talks.

Where the Fight Moved Next

On September 23, 2025, fifteen of the original 21 plaintiffs filed a 130-page petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an investigatory body of the Organization of American States.⁹ The petition accuses the U.S. government of violating rights guaranteed under the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, including rights to life, health, equality, family protection, property, and access to justice. It also alleges that the Justice Department’s aggressive efforts to block the domestic case themselves violated the plaintiffs’ procedural right to an effective remedy.¹⁰

This is not a substitute for a settlement. The commission’s recommendations are not legally binding, and because the United States does not recognize the jurisdiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the commission cannot refer the matter to that court.¹¹ As of mid-2026 the petitioners are still waiting to hear whether the commission will take up the case.¹⁰

Related Youth Climate Cases That Did Settle or Win

Readers looking for a “settlement” in youth climate litigation are sometimes thinking of one of Juliana’s sister cases. Two produced concrete results that Juliana never did, both brought by the same organization, Our Children’s Trust, that litigated Juliana.

Navahine F. v. Hawaii Department of Transportation

This one actually settled. Thirteen youth plaintiffs sued Hawaii’s Department of Transportation for failing to decarbonize the state’s transportation system, arguing the agency had violated their state constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. On June 20, 2024, Environmental Court Judge John Tonaki approved a settlement and canceled the scheduled trial.¹²

Under the agreement, the Department of Transportation committed to zero emissions in ground, interisland sea, and interisland air transportation by 2045, with interim reduction targets in 2030, 2035, and 2040.¹³ The department also agreed to dedicate at least $40 million to expanding the public electric vehicle charging network by 2030, to complete pedestrian, bicycle, and transit networks within five years, and to establish a volunteer youth advisory council.¹⁴ The court keeps jurisdiction over the settlement until 2045.

Held v. Montana

Held did not settle. It went to trial and won. Sixteen young Montanans challenged a state policy that excluded greenhouse gas emissions from environmental reviews of fossil fuel projects. After a seven-day trial in June 2023, Judge Kathy Seeley found that Montana’s fossil-fuel-promoting laws violated the plaintiffs’ constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment.”¹⁵ The Montana Supreme Court upheld that ruling in December 2024.¹⁶

The Montana legislature then passed new laws in 2025 that the plaintiffs said were designed to undermine the ruling. Thirteen of the original plaintiffs filed a follow-on petition, Held v. Montana II, on December 10, 2025. The Montana Supreme Court declined to take the petition directly on December 24, 2025, sending the challenge to district court instead.¹⁷

Why Juliana Could Not Do What Navahine and Held Did

The difference is the forum. Navahine and Held were brought in state court under state constitutions with explicit environmental protections. Hawaii and Montana both guarantee a right to a clean and healthful environment in their constitutional text, which gave judges a firmer legal footing to grant relief.¹⁸

Juliana was brought in federal court under the U.S. Constitution, which contains no comparable environmental provision. The Ninth Circuit’s 2020 ruling held that without “limited and precise” standards to guide them, federal judges could not design the kind of comprehensive remedy the plaintiffs originally sought. That reasoning has since been used to dismiss follow-on federal cases as well, including Lighthiser v. Trump and Genesis B. v. EPA, both of which the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissed in 2026 on redressability grounds citing Juliana.¹⁹²⁰

So the short answer to whether Juliana settled remains no. It was dismissed without a merits ruling, without a consent decree, and without any agreement between the plaintiffs and the government. Whatever the case accomplished, it accomplished through influence on other litigation, not through a resolution of its own.

1
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Juliana v. United States
2
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Statement on Juliana Case
3
League of Women Voters. Juliana v. United States
4
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Juliana v. United States, No. 18-36082
5
Our Children’s Trust. Juliana v. US
6
New England Journal of Medicine. Juliana v. United States
7
LSU Law. Juliana v. United States
8
UCC Youth Climate Justice. Juliana v. US
9
Inside Climate News. Juliana Youth Climate Activists Head to Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
10
Our Children’s Trust. Juliana IACHR
11
Jones Day. American Youth Climate Litigants Take the International Stage as US Litigation Continues
12
Office of the Governor of Hawaiʻi. Historic Agreement Settles Navahine Climate Litigation
13
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Navahine F. v. Hawaii Department of Transportation
14
Earthjustice. Historic Agreement Settles Hawaii Youth-Led Constitutional Climate Complaint
15
Our Children’s Trust. Held v. Montana
16
State Court Report. Montanas Climate Change Lawsuit May See Sequels Across America
17
Daily Montanan. Supreme Court Declines to Take Held Youth Challenges to 2025 Laws
18
Duke Journal of Constitutional Law and Public Policy. Stepping Into the Breach: State Constitutions as a Vehicle for Advancing Rights-Based Climate Litigation
19
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Lighthiser v. Trump
20
Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. Genesis B. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency