Federal Appeals Court Dismisses Youth Climate Suit Alleging Discrimination By The EPA

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has quashed a climate lawsuit brought by 18 young people in California against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency alleging that the agency’s “discounting” policy unlawfully discriminates against children. In a ruling issued on April 9, the court affirmed a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case on the basis that the youth plaintiffs lacked standing, or the criteria necessary to bring a case in court.

Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit law firm representing youth in rights-based climate cases against governments, initially filed the suit in 2023 against the Biden administration’s EPA. The case, Genesis B. et al. v. US EPA, argued that the EPA’s use of discounting in regulatory cost-benefit analyses intentionally devalues the lives of children and their futures in decisions pertaining to greenhouse gas regulations, thereby resulting in the allowance of unsafe levels of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate breakdown and harming America’s youth. The plaintiffs, who ranged in age from 8 to 17 when the case was filed, all have experienced adverse impacts or health issues linked to climate change such as having to evacuate from wildfires or suffering from extreme heat and wildfire smoke exposure.

Plaintiffs claimed that the EPA’s discounting policy violated their rights to equal protection under the U.S. Constitution.

A federal district court judge dismissed the case in 2024 but allowed the youth to file an amended complaint. The judge then once again granted the government defendants’ motion to dismiss in February 2025 – a decision that Our Children’s Trust said “represents complete judicial abdication in the face of an escalating climate emergency.” The organization accused the court of ignoring key evidence supporting the plaintiffs’ claim, including testimony from Nobel Laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz on the discriminatory nature of economic discounting.

Lawyers for the youth plaintiffs appealed the court’s dismissal, and a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court heard oral arguments last month. The panel appeared skeptical of the plaintiffs’ claim. One judge, Milan D. Smith, Jr., repeatedly questioned the youths’ attorney on how discounting could be intentionally discriminatory and how causation could be established absent a specific regulatory action or government decision to analyze.

Smith, who wrote the Ninth Circuit Court’s opinion affirming dismissal, explained in the ruling that plaintiffs failed to demonstrate “injury-in-fact” and that the alleged harms were not “fairly traceable” to government conduct. On the first point, the court determined that the EPA did not intentionally discriminate against children through its policy. Smith wrote that the plaintiffs’ arguments to the contrary were “mere ‘legal conclusions’ couched as facts.” He also wrote, on the second point, that “plaintiffs’ theory of causation is too speculative and tenuous,” noting that the current EPA is not even regulating greenhouse gas emissions. “While a future administration may be more likely to analyze and regulate GHG emissions, federal courts are not in the business of issuing advisory decisions on hypothetical disputes that may or may not materialize in years to come,” Smith wrote.

The court also determined that its own precedent from another youth climate case brought against the federal government, Juliana v. US, meant that the request for declaratory relief could not be granted because a court declaration could not on its own alleviate the youths’ climate-related injuries. “We see no daylight between the declaratory-judgment remedy sought by the plaintiffs [in Juliana] and the declaratory-judgment remedy sought by plaintiffs here,” Smith wrote.

That determination could be a troubling sign for the Lighthiser v. Trump youth climate case challenging several of President Trump’s pro-fossil fuel executive orders. A federal district court in Montana dismissed the case last year due to the Ninth Circuit Court’s precedent in Juliana on the insufficiency of declaratory relief in a case about climate change. The Lighthiser case is set to come before the Ninth Circuit Court in a hearing on appeal on Monday, April 13.

The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the court’s ruling in the Genesis case affirming dismissal.

“This decision closes the courthouse doors on children seeking protection of their most basic constitutional right: equal protection under the law. By declining to reinstate the case, the Court leaves in place a framework that discriminates against young people and worsens the life-threatening harms from heat, wildfire smoke, and climate disasters without judicial review,” Our Children’s Trust co-executive director Mat dos Santos said in a statement.

“Children are bearing the heaviest burdens of a crisis they did not create, while the government knowingly permits policies that discount their lives and put their health, safety, and futures at risk,” dos Santos added. “We will continue to fight unlawful discrimination until we secure the constitutional protections that every child is owed.”