Federal Court Dismisses Youth Climate Lawsuit Challenging Trump Executive Orders

The federal court system will not give a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit additional consideration after a panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a petition to rehear the case before the full circuit.

Lighthiser v. Trump is one of a series of youth-led climate change lawsuits brought by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based advocacy law firm, which also successfully litigated Held v. Montana in 2023, a landmark climate case that found the Montana Constitution guarantees the right to “a clean and healthful” environment.

The plaintiffs in the Lighthiser case include young people from Montana, Oregon, Hawaii, California and Florida.

The lawsuit was first argued before a federal judge in Missoula who “reluctantly” dismissed the case.

In June, a three-judge panel of the circuit court also rejected the lawsuit’s arguments that three executive orders President Donald Trump signed early in his second term will accelerate human-caused climate change and harm the youth.

A major sticking point for both the district and federal court judges was that the request by the youth — to roll back the executive orders and prevent any federal agencies from enforcing them — was an “unprecedented” ask and effectively challenged hundreds of existing and anticipated actions.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the court was declining to look at the hard evidence that carbon dioxide emissions from the fossil fuel industry — bolstered in the executive orders — are closely linked to climate change and causing a “children’s health emergency.”

“In this case, not a single government official even attempted to controvert that climate change is real, that it is rapidly changing our environment in the United States, and that it’s responsible for causing a children’s health emergency,” said Dan Snyder, Director of Public Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Project.

The district court had agreed with the scientific arguments, but not the legal basis of the case, with federal district court Judge Dana Christensen saying the scope of the request from the 22 young people was “an unworkable request.”

“No circuit court in American history has ever said it lacked the power to review an unconstitutional executive order. Until this case,” Julia Olson, Chief Legal Counsel and Co-Executive Director of Our Children’s Trust, said in a statement. “The President cannot lawfully direct a sweeping fossil fuel agenda that endangers children’s lives with no meaningful judicial check.”

Montana, which lost a constitutional challenge from youth plaintiffs — Held v. Montana — in 2024, intervened in the case, with lawyers from the attorney general’s office taking part in both the district and circuit court arguments.

“The court’s rejection confirms what we’ve said all along, that this case was never about the law, but an attempt to block President Trump’s pro-energy policies and force a liberal climate agenda,” Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen said in a statement. “The court got it right by refusing to rehear a case that was already correctly decided.”

The challenged orders included Trump Executive Orders 14154, “Unleashing American Energy;” 14156, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency;” and 14261, “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.”