Animal Legal Defense Fund v. United States

Nonprofit organizations and individuals filed their opening brief in their Ninth Circuit appeal of a District of Oregon decision dismissing their lawsuit asserting a constitutional “right to wilderness” that the federal government violated by failing to protect public wild lands from climate change. The plaintiffs-appellants argued that the district court erred when it found that the plaintiffs lacked standing and ruled that no plaintiff can suffer a particularized injury due to climate change. The plaintiffs also contended that they had specifically alleged the particular remedies they sought to protect public lands from the adverse impacts from climate change. In addition, the plaintiffs argued that they had pled sufficient facts to state “a substantive due process right to be let alone … , expressed through solitude in wilderness.”

The federal district court for the District of Oregon dismissed a lawsuit in which two nonprofit organizations and six individuals claimed that climate change and the government’s failure to protect them from climate change violated their constitutional rights. The court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to allege the particularized harm necessary for standing because climate change is “a diffuse, global phenomenon that affects every citizen of the world.” The court further ruled that it lacked jurisdiction to make the “policy decisions” that would be required to grant the relief sought by the plaintiffs, which related to federal policies on fossil fuels, agriculture, logging, and family planning. In addition, the court found no basis for the plaintiffs’ assertions of a fundamental right to wilderness and therefore found that they failed to state a claim upon which relief could be granted. The court distinguished the district court’s decisions in Juliana, writing that the Juliana plaintiffs “did not object to the government’s role in just any pollution or climate change, but rather catastrophic levels of pollution or climate change.” The court also said the right to a “stable climate system” at issue in Juliana was narrower than the right to wilderness for which the plaintiffs advocated in this case.