The Supreme Court Temporarily Halts the Climate Kids Case

On Friday [Oct. 19th], the Supreme Court brought a temporary halt to the astounding climate kids case that was set to begin trial at the end of the month in federal court in Oregon.  I say ‘astounding’ because the claims are absurd and the requests for relief are gargantuan.

In 2015, a group of 21 young people ages 10 to 21 filed suit against the federal government asserting a constitutional right to a sustainable environment.  They allege that the government knew all about climate change but continued to promote the use of fossil fuels for another 50 years.  This is not some random group of kids.  They were organized by an environmental group, as you might suspect, and are proceeding under the stewardship of James Hansen, the former NASA zealot who has a reputation for exaggerating global warming and turning science into ideology.  So here we have a phony made-up case by the Left and a left-wing trial judge more than willing to play along.

Where does a constitutional right to a sustainable environment come from, you might ask?  Beats me.  Earlier this month, the trial judge dismissed the plaintiffs’ Ninth Amendment claim.  The Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that all unenumerated rights are retained by the people. So far, courts have not been willing to treat the Ninth as a fountain of rights and have not declared any new rights under it.  The closest we’ve come is Justice Goldberg’s concurring opinion in Griswold v. Connecticut 50-plus years ago citing the Ninth in support of a constitutional right to marital privacy. 

More on the Ninth another day.  But who needs the Ninth when you can use the Due Process clause of the 5th and 14th Amendments to declare new rights?  Like when Justice Kennedy declared a fundamental right to same-sex marriage in the Obergefell case.  Folks, it’s not the rule of law when courts can make stuff up and shove it down our throats.  But this is exactly what the trial judge in the climate kids case may end up doing: declare a never-before-seen fundamental right to a sustainable environment and impose remedies one observer called “the complete restructuring of the U.S. economy.”  The kids want the government to phase out all fossil fuels and reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so that we can return to, what in their view will be, a stable environment. 

To buy all this, not only do you have to believe in man-made climate change, you have to believe that it’s appropriate for courts to make national policy.  The plaintiffs are requesting enormous changes that would completely upend national environmental and energy policy.  Forget the elected representatives of the people, we’ll just run large sectors of the economy out of a single courtroom in Oregon, how’s that sound?  And this, from the Left, which is always nattering on about ‘democracy’. 

It’s not clear what’s going to happen.  After the Supreme Court’s order on Friday [Oct. 19th], discovery and the trial are halted pending further briefing.  The plaintiffs’ response to the government’s pleadings is due on Wednesday [Oct.24th].   Whether and when the trial will take place is up in the air, and we don’t know for how long.  The Supreme Court has already greenlighted this case once, so it’s not immediately apparent what they’re driving at now.  If the Supreme Court had an objection to the declaration of a fundamental right to a sustainable environment or to the broad sweeping remedies requested, they could have put a stop to this insanity the first time around.  Maybe the Court will finally accept the government’s argument that the young plaintiffs lack standing because they can’t show any particularized injury from governmental policy any different from that felt by anyone else.  Who knows?  Stay tuned.