Have the Federal Courts Responded to Climate Suits by Providing Equal Justice Under Law?
In 2019 the Walker Foundation issued a “Position Statement on Global Warming and the Rule of Law”. In November 2019, the first Trump administration submitted its formal notice to withdraw from the Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, making the U.S. the only nation to withdraw from the pact, citing “unfair economic burdens”. While the withdrawal was later reversed by the Biden administration in 2021, the Trump Administration again withdrew the United States in 2025. While the withdrawals and reversal gained significant public attention around the world, the attention missed the critical point: neither administration took actions sufficient to reduce climate pollution necessary to meet the goal of avoiding a global temperature increase of 1.5ºC.
As predicted by climate scientists, global temperatures have continued to increase, exceeding the 1.5C threshold for the first time in 2024. At the same time, cost-adjusted, U.S. billion-dollar climate disasters surged. In response, the Trump administration announced in 2025 that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was retiring its “Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disasters” database that tracked the economic costs of climate events. While the data is still visible online, no updates have been made since 2024. Rather than request funding from Congress that would allow federal agencies to respond to the existential risks facing our nation, the President issued executive orders defunding federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, that could provide factual evidence about climate change risks.
Given the institutional and political constraints faced by today’s federal government, the Foundation turned to the federal courts, where judges of the Supreme Court, Courts of Appeals, and District Courts are appointed for life and charged with making decisions based on the law and facts despite the prevailing political winds. The goal of the trustees was to support one or more lawsuits asking courts to rule based on the overwhelming scientific evidence about the cause and impacts of climate change on our nation. Specifically, the Foundation supported Our Children’s Trust in seeking a court order to protect the constitutional rights of youth plaintiffs to a livable climate, by requiring a national remedial plan to discontinue permitting and subsidizing fossil fuels, and rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. What followed over the near decade of federal litigation begs the question: Has the U.S. Supreme Court honored the motto inscribed above its main entrance: “Equal Justice Under Law”?
In 2019 the TV News Program, 60 Minutes, featured a story on the 21 youth plaintiffs seeking federal action to compel the U.S. government to cease promoting and subsidizing fossil fuels and create a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. They argued that government actions violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property.
Response of Federal Courts
After the landmark success of the youth plaintiffs in the District Court, the United States government utilized writs of mandamus—an extraordinary remedy reserved for rare emergencies—to block landmark climate change lawsuits from ever reaching trial. By seeking these orders from higher courts, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has aimed to halt discovery and force the dismissal of cases that would have allowed youth plaintiffs to present evidence of the government's knowledge and actions regarding climate change.
The Tool: Writ of Mandamus
A writ of mandamus is a "drastic and extraordinary" remedy used to compel a lower court to perform a duty or correct an abuse of discretion. It is typically meant for "exceptional circumstances of peculiar emergency". However, the federal government has employed this tool in climate litigation to avoid having to present evidence by skipping the normal appellate processes, arguing that allowing cases to proceed would infringe upon the executive branch's authority and cause irreparable harm through burdensome discovery.
In effect, the executive branch claims that simply litigating the case would be too costly.
Evidence in Juliana v. United States
The most prominent example of this strategy is Juliana v. United States (often called the "kids' climate case"), filed in 2015 by 21 youth plaintiffs alleging that federal fossil fuel policies violated their constitutional rights.
- Preventing Trial: After losing at the District Court, the government filed multiple petitions for mandamus to stop the case, arguing that the lawsuit was an "improper attempt to have the judiciary decide important questions of energy and environmental policy".
- Blocking Evidence: The government argued that pre-trial discovery—the process of sharing evidence—would be too burdensome for federal agencies.
- Success of Strategy: Although the case persisted for nearly a decade, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually granted the federal government's petition for a writ of mandamus, ordering the district court to dismiss the case in 2024.
"Seven Petitions" and Record Use
According to attorneys for the youth plaintiffs, the federal government filed seven emergency pre-trial petitions for writs of mandamus to block the Juliana case—more than in any other case in U.S. history. In April 2024, the Ninth Circuit granted the mandamus petition to dismiss the case, accepting arguments that the suit lacked standing and violated the separation of powers.
Legal Implications
By successfully using writs of mandamus, the federal government has prevented trials that would have forced officials to testify about their understanding of climate science and policy. Legal experts note that this tactic has enabled the government to avoid, for a significant time, presenting evidence or defending its policies in an open court, effectively using procedural hurdles to silence climate accountability efforts.
The Writ of Mandamus as a Legal Shield
A writ of mandamus is a drastic tool used by higher courts to correct obvious errors by lower court judges on matters of extreme importance. It is traditionally used only when no other legal avenue is available. However, in major climate cases like Juliana v. United States, the federal government has used this "rare and extraordinary" tool to stop proceedings before they could progress to a full trial.
- The Juliana Case: Between 2015 and 2024, the government filed seven separate petitions for writ of mandamus against the trial judge, Ann Aiken, to prevent the case from reaching discovery and trial.
- Judicial Overreach: Plaintiffs and some legal experts argue the Ninth Circuit's eventual granting of the writ in 2024 disregarded mandatory Supreme Court conditions for such an order, effectively "divesting the district court of its inherent discretion".
Impact on Evidence and Testimony
The primary effect of these mandamus petitions has been to "silence" plaintiffs by denying them the opportunity to enter "overwhelming evidence" into the official court record
- Preventing Fact-Finding: Trial courts generally handle jurisdictional and evidentiary questions as "bread-and-butter" work. By using mandamus, the government avoids the "fact-finding phase" where expert testimony and government data on climate change would be scrutinized.
- Dismissal for Lack of Redressability: The Ninth Circuit ultimately ordered the dismissal of the Juliana case in May 2024, ruling that the plaintiffs lacked standing because the court could not provide a remedy (redressability) for the broad harms of climate change.
- Finality in Federal Court: The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review this dismissal in March 2025, bringing a definitive end to the Juliana case in the federal system.
What these rulings do—and do not—mean
The dismissals did not amount to a factual finding that climate change is not occurring, or that the plaintiffs’ injuries are not real. Rather, the Ninth Circuit concluded that the plaintiffs could not satisfy the requirements for federal jurisdiction and that the relief sought exceeded what the Ninth Circuit viewed as an appropriate judicial remedy.
This creates a structural tension: claims involving broad, nationwide climate remedies may be found to factually true and legally compelling, but still rejected by federal courts as beyond the judiciary’s role. This is a remarkable shift from the long-standing view that courts must review government created harms and adjudicate the questions that the political branches fail to address.
Expanding Strategies: Preemptive Lawsuits
Beyond the Juliana case, the federal government has shifted toward using preemptive litigation and executive orders to block climate-related suits brought under state laws.
- Targeting "Climate Superfund" Laws: In May 2025, following a Trump administration executive order, the DOJ filed lawsuits against Vermont, New York, Hawaii, and Michigan to stop them from pursuing damages from fossil fuel companies.
- Constitutional Challenges: The federal government argues these state laws are unconstitutional because they interfere with federal regulatory schemes, violate the Commerce Clause, and overreach into foreign affairs.
- Forced Venue Shifts: DOJ officials stated that these legal challenges had the "intended effect" of forcing states to file in federal courts, where the industry believes climate lawsuits are more likely to be quashed.
Returning to “Equal Justice Under Law”
If “equal justice” means equal access to a forum where evidence can be presented and tested, these outcomes raise difficult questions. When major climate claims are resolved through jurisdictional doctrines and extraordinary procedural tools, the public may reasonably wonder whether the courts have enabled a full airing of the evidence—especially for the young people most affected over the long term.
The increasingly conservative federal judiciary’s consistent emphasis on standing and redressability reflects a view that certain remedies must be designed by the political branches.
Organizations like Our Children’s Trust and state governments attempting to address the accelerating pace of both climate change and the attendant crisis reject the emergent claim that this approach somehow protects democracy by removing power of the judiciary to decide these important questions. Instead, they believe, as does the Foundation, that this flawed logic prevents accountability in the face of a destabilizing climate.
Barrett P. Walker
Alex C. Walker Foundation
