A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals “reluctantly” dismissed the Juliana case on January 17, 2020, the judges ruling what legal observers suspected: that the court doesn’t have the authority to tell the executive branch what to do about climate change, doing so would take decades of supervision, something that would violate the separation of powers.
Not all three judges agreed. In a lengthy dissenting opinion, California district judge Josephine L. Staton argued that courts do have the authority to protect the young in the face of climate breakdown, and should. In her remarks, she noted: “The injuries experienced by plaintiffs are the first small wave in an oncoming tsunami—now visible on the horizon of the not-so-distant future—that will destroy the United States as we currently know it. What sets this harm apart from all others is not just its magnitude, but its irreversibility.”
Our Children’s Trust appealed the ruling on March 3, 2020, asking that the full court of the Ninth Circuit review the case and send it back to the lower court for trial. That appeal is still pending.