HELENA - A federal judge in Missoula has dismissed a lawsuit from a group of young plaintiffs, challenging the Trump administration’s energy policies.
U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen ruled Wednesday that the 22 plaintiffs in Lighthiser v. Trump had legitimate concerns about the impacts of those policies, but that he didn’t believe the court had the jurisdiction to grant what they were asking for.
It comes a month after plaintiffs laid out their case in a two-day hearing in federal court.
The plaintiffs — who range in age from 7 to 25 and live in five states, including Montana — sought to block three executive orders the Trump administration says will “unleash” American energy production.
Their attorneys argue that those orders are causing the plaintiffs direct harm by encouraging more fossil fuel development, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution.
In his ruling, Christensen said the plaintiffs had demonstrated that climate change and other impacts from fossil fuels were a “children’s health emergency,” and that the administration’s policies could exacerbate that.
“Yet while this Court is certainly troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change and the Challenged EOs’ effect on carbon dioxide emissions, this concern does not automatically confer upon it the power to act,” he went on to say.
Christensen said, if he granted an injunction against the executive orders, the court would need to review every action the Trump administration took on energy to determine whether it was implemented under the orders or some other policy.
“In other words, this Court would be required to monitor an untold number of federal agency actions to determine whether they contravene its injunction,” he said. “This is, quite simply, an unworkable request for which Plaintiffs provide no precedent.”
Christensen said he believed a ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, dismissing another youth-led climate case in Juliana v. United States, required this outcome.
He said, if the appeals court disagrees, they can return the case to him for another look – but for now, he determined it must be dismissed.
“Rather, Plaintiffs’ compelling case for redress must be made to the political branches or to the electorate,” he wrote.
Of the 22 plaintiffs in this case, 15 are from Montana. Ten – including its namesake, Eva Lighthiser – were also plaintiffs in the Held v. Montana case, in which they successfully challenged Montana policies on greenhouse gases in the state court system.
Read Christensen's full ruling:
