Juliana v. United States was a federal constitutional lawsuit filed in 2015 by twenty-one young Americans who argued that decades of federal policies promoting fossil fuels violated their rights to life, liberty, and property by destabilizing the climate. The case survived early dismissal and produced a district court ruling recognizing a fundamental right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life, but the Ninth Circuit reversed in 2020, ordered the case dismissed in 2024, and the U.S. Supreme Court denied review on March 24, 2025, ending the litigation after nearly a decade.
The Young Plaintiffs and Their Injuries
The lawsuit was brought by twenty-one individuals who were between eight and nineteen years old when the case was filed.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States Their claims were grounded in specific harms. One had been forced from her home by water scarcity. Another had repeatedly evacuated a coastal home because of flooding. Others described worsening asthma from wildfire smoke, destroyed family property, and disruption of food sources tied to traditional ways of life.
The plaintiffs were represented at no cost by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit that coordinates youth-led climate lawsuits and builds its cases around constitutional claims rather than environmental statutes. The organization supplied the legal team, funded the scientific evidence, and shaped the theory that governments owe a constitutional duty to preserve the climate system for future generations.
Who Was Sued
The complaint named the United States along with several executive agencies, including the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, and the Environmental Protection Agency.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States The theory was not that federal agencies had failed to regulate emissions vigorously enough. It was that federal policy had, over many decades, permitted, authorized, and subsidized the fossil fuel system knowing what the consequences would be. Three fossil fuel industry groups intervened as co-defendants early in the case but withdrew before discovery, leaving the federal government as the sole defendant.
The Constitutional Claims
The plaintiffs built their case on three legal theories.
Fifth Amendment Due Process
The central claim was that federal policy violated the plaintiffs’ rights to life, liberty, and property under the Due Process Clause. The argument went beyond regulatory failure. It accused the government of affirmatively creating danger by building and sustaining a fossil-fuel-dependent energy system. The plaintiffs framed this as a fundamental right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life, an interpretation that would have placed climate stability among the unenumerated rights recognized by the Supreme Court.
Public Trust Doctrine
The second theory extended the public trust doctrine to the atmosphere. The doctrine traditionally obligates governments to protect shared resources like navigable waterways for public use. The plaintiffs argued the atmosphere is a shared resource too, and that the federal government is a trustee bound to prevent its destruction. Federal courts have generally treated the doctrine as a matter of state law, so its application at the federal level was legally unsettled.
Equal Protection
The plaintiffs also argued that federal energy policies disproportionately burden young people, who will bear the worst consequences of climate change but had no role in the political decisions that caused them. The district court partially dismissed this claim, finding that age is not a specially protected class, but allowed it to proceed on a theory tied to fundamental rights.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States
Judge Aiken’s 2016 Ruling
The federal government moved to dismiss almost immediately. In November 2016, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Oregon denied the motion. She wrote that she had “no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” No federal court had said anything like it before.
The ruling did not decide the case on the merits. It only allowed the plaintiffs’ claims to proceed to discovery and potentially trial. That possibility alarmed the federal government, and much of what followed was an effort to ensure the evidence never reached a courtroom.
How the Government Blocked Trial
After Judge Aiken’s ruling, the Department of Justice mounted an aggressive procedural defense. It sought a writ of mandamus from the Ninth Circuit to shut the case down, which was denied. It asked the Supreme Court for a stay of proceedings, which was also denied. It filed a second mandamus petition, and while that was pending the Ninth Circuit invited the district court to certify the case for interlocutory appeal. The district court did so, the Ninth Circuit accepted the appeal, and a trial that had been scheduled for late 2018 was called off.
The merits were never tested. The Ninth Circuit itself later noted the “copious expert evidence” showing that the federal government had long understood the risks of fossil fuel use.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States
The Ninth Circuit’s 2020 Reversal
On January 17, 2020, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 against the plaintiffs. The opinion, written by Judge Andrew Hurwitz, accepted much of the plaintiffs’ factual case but concluded the courts had no power to grant the requested relief.
On two of the three requirements for constitutional standing, the plaintiffs prevailed. The court found they had shown concrete injuries and that a genuine factual dispute existed over whether federal policies were a substantial factor in causing those injuries. The court noted that the United States accounted for over 25 percent of worldwide carbon emissions from 1850 to 2012.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States
The case failed on the third element: redressability. Article III of the Constitution permits federal courts to hear a case only if a favorable ruling would actually fix or meaningfully reduce the harm.2Constitution Annotated. Overview of Standing The majority held that ordering the government to design and carry out a national plan to phase out fossil fuels and restore the atmosphere was beyond what any court could enforce. Such a plan required policy judgments belonging to Congress and the executive branch, and would demand decades of judicial supervision.1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States
The majority wrote that the plaintiffs’ case “must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large.” The court acknowledged the government may have “abdicated their responsibility” but concluded that fact did not confer judicial authority to intervene.
Judge Staton’s Dissent
Judge Josephine Staton dissented and would have let the case go to trial. On redressability, she argued the majority set the bar impossibly high. She pointed to Massachusetts v. EPA, where the Supreme Court held that even a partial reduction in emissions satisfied Article III. Applied to Juliana, the question was not whether a court order could stop climate change but whether it could slow the damage by some meaningful degree. “Something,” she wrote, “is all that standing requires.”1United States Courts. Juliana v. United States
Staton framed the case as a challenge to the government’s willful destruction of the conditions that make organized society possible. She wrote that “the Constitution does not condone the Nation’s willful destruction” and that the perpetuity of the Republic is a structural principle in the constitutional system. She noted that courts have long experience supervising complex remedial plans in areas like school desegregation and prison reform.
The Final Dismissal and Supreme Court Denial
The plaintiffs did not give up after 2020. They returned to the district court and amended their complaint to narrow the requested relief to a declaratory judgment rather than the broad injunction the Ninth Circuit had found unenforceable. The district court allowed the amendment and denied the government’s motion to dismiss.
The government filed another mandamus petition. In May 2024, the Ninth Circuit granted it, ordering the district court to dismiss the case entirely and without leave to amend. The court held that its 2020 mandate required dismissal and that no amendment could cure the standing defect.3Supreme Court of the United States. Juliana v. United States Appendix Rehearing was denied in July 2024.
The plaintiffs then went to the U.S. Supreme Court twice. A mandamus petition asking the Court to determine whether the Ninth Circuit had overstepped was denied in November 2024. A petition for certiorari, filed under case number 24-645, was denied on March 24, 2025.
What the Case Left Behind
Juliana never produced a binding ruling that Americans have a constitutional right to a stable climate. The Ninth Circuit assumed such a right might exist without deciding it, and the case was dismissed on procedural grounds.
The most concrete legacy is at the state level. In Held v. State of Montana, brought by Our Children’s Trust using many of the strategies developed in Juliana, a Montana district court ruled in 2023 that the state’s ban on considering greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews violated the Montana Constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment.” The Montana Supreme Court affirmed in 2024, holding that the state constitutional right includes a stable climate system.4Justia Law. Held v. State
At the federal level, Our Children’s Trust filed Genesis B. v. EPA in December 2023 on behalf of eighteen young Californians, this time focusing on the EPA and framing the claim around equal protection for children as a distinct class. The district court dismissed the case, and in April 2026 the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal on standing grounds. The plaintiffs are evaluating their options.
The redressability barrier that killed Juliana remains the central obstacle for federal climate litigation. Federal courts have consistently held that designing national climate policy falls outside their authority, no matter how strong the underlying evidence. Judge Staton’s dissent left future litigants a roadmap for arguing that incremental judicial relief can satisfy Article III, and the scientific record linking federal policy to climate harm continues to grow.