Trump violating right to life with anti-environment orders, youth lawsuit says [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Thu 29 May 2025 14.40 EDT
First published on Thu 29 May 2025 09.13 EDT
Twenty-two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its anti-environment executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday.
The federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health, argue the plaintiffs, who are between the ages of seven and 25 and hail from the heavily climate-impacted states of Montana, Hawaii, Oregon, California and Florida. They also say officials’ emissions-increasing and science-suppressing orders have violated the state-created danger doctrine, a legal principle meant to prevent government actors from inflicting injury upon their citizens.
“At its core, this suit is about the health of children, it’s about the right to life, it’s about the right to form families,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit. “We all have constitutional rights, and if we don’t use our constitution – if we walk away from it and we walk away from our youth – we will not have a democracy.”
The lawsuit specifically targets three of the slew of pro-fossil fuel executive orders Trump has signed during his second term. Among them are two day-one Trump moves to declare a “national energy emergency” and “unleash American energy”, and another April order aimed at “reinvigorating” the domestic production of coal – the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-administration-sued-anti-environment-orders
Link to Our Children's Trust PRESS RELEASE (PDF) - 22 Youth Sue Donald Trump Over Executive Orders That Escalate Climate Crisis
Link to suit BACKGROUND INFO - YOUTH V. TRUMP
Link to SUIT (PDF) - https://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/s/20250529Complaint-Final.pdf
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