Juliana v. United States

The U.S. Supreme Court denied youth plaintiffs’ petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of the Ninth Circuit’s May 2024 order directing the federal district court for the District of Oregon to dismiss their second amended complaint in the climate change lawsuit they filed in 2015. The second amended complaint sought a declaration that the U.S.’s national energy system and a federal energy statute providing for authorizations of certain natural gas imports and exports violated the Constitution by causing harmful conditions that result from climate change. The district court had allowed the plaintiffs to amend their complaint after the Ninth Circuit ruled in 2020 that the plaintiffs lacked standing because their alleged harms from climate change were not redressable by the courts. In 2024, the Ninth Circuit granted the federal government’s petition for writ of mandamus and ordered the court to dismiss the case, rejecting the plaintiffs’ arguments that the Ninth Circuit’s mandate did not preclude amendment and that an intervening Supreme Court decision changed the law on redressability of declaratory judgments.

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In a supplemental order, the district court responded to the Ninth Circuit’s invitation to address the petition for writ of mandamus. The district court stated that although the case raised “legal issues of first impression,” the matters the district court had addressed were “the bread-and-butter of daily trial court work: injury, causation, and redressability under Article III; justiciability; viability of claims under Federal Rules of Procedure 12(b); standards for injunctive and declaratory relief—foundational inquiries necessary to proceed to any factfinding phase reaching the heart of plaintiffs’ novel claims.” The district court maintained that the issues raised in the mandamus petition (whether the district court violated the writ of mandate, and the district court’s findings that the plaintiffs had standing and had stated plausible due process and public trust doctrine claims) were “better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation” than in a petition for writ of mandamus.

The federal district court for the District of Oregon denied the federal government’s motion to stay proceedings while the Ninth Circuit considered the government’s petition for writ of mandamus. The district court found that the federal defendants did not meet their burden of showing a likelihood that their petition for writ of mandamus would succeed on the merits. The court also rejected the defendants’ contentions that litigation costs and “potential, intrusive discovery that treads on separation of powers grounds” would result in irreparable injury if a stay was not granted to resolve threshold jurisdictional issues. The court further found that the plaintiffs had provided “substantial evidence of tangible, irreparable injury brought about the defendants’ repeated delays,” with “[e]xpert and plaintiff declarations … establish[ing] an ever-worsening climate crisis and with it, risks to plaintiffs’ health, their future, and their constitutional due process rights.” The court also stated that it could not discern any public interest in further delaying the case from reaching the evidentiary phase.

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The defendants opposed the plaintiffs' motion for leave to file a second amended complaint, arguing that it was barred by the Ninth Circuit’s mandate, which included “unambiguous” instructions to the district court to dismiss the case, and that amendments would be futile.

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The U.S. Supreme Court denied youth plaintiffs’ petition for writ of mandamus that requested that the Court determine whether the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals exceeded its jurisdiction when it directed the district court to dismiss the amended complaint filed by the plaintiffs in June 2023 in their lawsuit alleging that federal defendants violated their constitutionally protected rights to a stable climate system capable of sustaining human life. The plaintiffs’ counsel said the plaintiffs would file a petition for writ of certiorari seeking review of the Ninth Circuit’s decision. The deadline for the certiorari petition is December 9, 2024.

On July 12, 2024, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Juliana plaintiffs’ motion for rehearing or reconsideration en banc of the court’s May 2024 order that granted the federal government’s petition for a writ of mandamus and directed the federal district court for the District of Oregon to dismiss the case. Each judge on the panel that issued the decision on the petition voted to deny the motion, and after the motion was distributed to the full court, no judge requested a vote on whether to rehear the matter en banc. The court also denied the plaintiffs’ motion to vacate the May order and recall the mandate.

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The plaintiffs withdrew their motion to stay the mandate “[b]ecause Defendants’ position is clear that the issuance of the mandate does not preclude settlement or Plaintiffs’ ability to seek future relief from the issuance of the mandate.”

The federal defendants filed their opposition to the motion to stay the mandate, arguing that the Supreme Court was unlikely to grant the petition, “much less reverse this Court’s judgment,” because the Ninth Circuit had applied settled precedent. The U.S. defendants also contended that the plaintiffs would not suffer irreparable harm, given that they would be able to obtain relief if the Supreme Court ruled in their favor. The defendants also noted that issuance of the mandate “is no impediment to settlement” since settlement remained possible so long as a case was pending, even if pending before the Supreme Court.

On December 26, 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals granted the federal government’s petition for permission to appeal an Oregon federal court’s decisions allowing constitutional climate change claims brought by a group of young people to proceed. Judge Friedland dissented from the order, writing that she believed the district court’s statements in its order certifying the decisions for interlocutory appeal prevented the Ninth Circuit from permitting the appeal because the district court “expressed that it does not actually think that the criteria for certification are satisfied.” Certification for interlocutory appeal requires (1) that the “order involves a controlling question of law as to which there is substantial ground for difference of opinion,” and (2) that “an immediate appeal from the order may materially advance the ultimate termination of the litigation.” Judge Friedland said it appeared that the court “felt compelled” to declare that certification requirements were satisfied due the Supreme Court’s statements that “[t]he breadth of [the] claims is striking, … and the justiciability of those claims presents substantial grounds for difference of opinion” and by the Ninth Circuit’s echoing of those statements. Judge Friedland noted that the decision whether to certify was left to the district court’s discretion, and that while the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court might be “as well-positioned as the district court” to consider the first “purely legal” requirement for certification, the district court “is far better positioned” to assess the second requirement, which concerns “how to resolve the litigation most efficiently.” In a footnote, Judge Friedland wrote that “[i]t is also concerning that allowing this appeal now effectively rewards the Government for its repeated efforts to bypass normal litigation procedures,” and that “[i]f anything has wasted judicial resources in this case, it was those efforts.”

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The Ninth Circuit denied as moot the government’s pending mandamus petition, which was filed after the Supreme Court denied its application for a stay. The Ninth Circuit also denied all other pending motions as moot, including the Juliana plaintiffs’ emergency motion for a lifting of stay previously granted by the Ninth Circuit.

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After the district court stayed proceedings, the government told the Supreme Court and the Ninth Circuit (in submissions made in connection with its pending mandamus petitions) that it would file a petition for permission to appeal in the Ninth Circuit by December 3 and that it expected to seek dismissal of the mandamus petitions if the Ninth Circuit permitted appeal.

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On November 2, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court issued an order denying the federal government's application for a stay of district court proceedings in the constitutional climate case brought by young plaintiffs in the District of Oregon. The Court also vacated an administrative stay granted by Chief Justice Roberts on October 19. The federal government had sought a stay pending the Court's disposition of a petition for a writ of mandamus ordering the district court to dismiss the suit. The Court said the petition for a writ of mandamus did not have a "fair prospect" of success because the government could still seek mandamus relief in the Ninth Circuit. The Court noted that while the Ninth Circuit had denied two earlier requests for mandamus relief in this case, "the court’s basis for denying relief rested, in large part, on the early stage of the litigation, the likelihood that plaintiffs’ claims would narrow as the case progressed, and the possibility of attaining relief through ordinary dispositive motions." The Supreme Court indicated that those reasons were, "to a large extent, no longer pertinent" since a 50-day trial was scheduled to begin on October 29, 2018 and had been held in abeyance only because of Chief Justice Roberts's administrative stay. Justices Gorsuch and Thomas would have granted the stay.

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The plaintiffs filed a response to the government’s stay application on October 22. They argued that staying the case and reaching the substantive constitutional questions “prematurely” would “deprive this Court of the record necessary for considered appellate review of the claims presented, profoundly disrupt the separation of powers underlying this Court’s most vital role, severely interfere with the orderly administration and resolution of cases and the reservation of appellate consideration until after final judgment, and unnecessarily undermine the confidence of the American people in our Nation’s justice system.” They contended that the government had not established any likelihood of irreparable harm that could not be corrected on appeal after trial, and that, on the other hand, the young plaintiffs were already suffering irreparable harm due to accumulation of carbon dioxide emissions and would continue to be irreparably harmed by additional delay. They also argued that it was “fairly unlikely” that a majority of the Court would vote to intervene in the case at this stage of the proceedings.

On November 2, 2018, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an order denying the federal government's emergency motion for a stay of district court proceedings pending Supreme Court review. The Ninth Circuit said that Chief Justice Roberts's granting of a stay of the litigation on October 19 rendered the government's "non-substantive" motion moot. (The Ninth Circuit issued its order just hours before the Supreme Court denied the government's stay application and vacated the Chief Justice's stay.)

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On July 30, 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the federal government’s application for a stay of the young people’s climate change lawsuit pending in the federal district court for the District of Oregon, which is scheduled for trial beginning on October 29, 2018. The Supreme Court’s order denying the stay application said the request for relief was premature and denied the request without prejudice. The Court also noted that “[t]he breadth of respondents’ claims is striking, however, and the justiciability of those claims presents substantial grounds for difference of opinion.” The Court said the district court “should take these concerns into account in assessing the burdens of discovery and trial, as well as the desirability of a prompt ruling on the Government’s pending dispositive motions.”

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After the Ninth Circuit denied the government’s second mandamus petition on July 20, the federal government indicated in a letter to the Supreme Court that the alternative course of action of construing its stay application as a petition for writ of certiorari or mandamus was “even more warranted” because “nothing relevant remains to be done in the lower courts.”

In its opinion denying the second petition for writ of mandamus without prejudice, the Ninth Circuit found that no new circumstances justified the second petition. The Ninth Circuit said the government had not satisfied the five factors for mandamus at this stage of the proceedings, and stated: “It remains the case that the issues that the government raises in its petition are better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation.” The Ninth Circuit rejected, among other arguments, the government’s contention that it would be prejudiced in a way not correctable on appeal because agency officials would have to answer questions on the topic of climate change. The Ninth Circuit characterized the government as arguing that answering such questions could constitute “agency decisionmaking,” which would require adherence to the requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). The Ninth Circuit said the government “cites no authority for the proposition that agency officials’ routine responses to discovery requests in civil litigation can constitute agency decisionmaking that would be subject to the APA.” The Ninth Circuit also again rejected the argument that proceeding with discovery and trial would violate separation of powers. The Ninth Circuit indicated that the federal government could challenge “any specific discovery order that it believes would be unduly burdensome or would threaten the separation of powers” but that “[p]reemptively seeking a broad protective order barring all discovery does not exhaust the government’s avenues of relief.”

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a one-page order denying the United States' emergency motion for stay of discovery and trial. The court said it would hear the petition for writ of mandamus on an expedited basis.

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The U.S. solicitor general submitted a request for another extension of time within which the federal government may file a petition for writ of certiorari for review of the Ninth Circuit’s denial of the U.S.’s petition for a writ of mandamus ordering dismissal of the Juliana case. The U.S. sought to extend the filing deadline from July 5 to August 6.

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on March 7 that the United States and other federal petitioners had not met the “high bar” for the appellate court to order a district court to dismiss the climate change lawsuit brought by 21 young people in the District of Oregon. The Ninth Circuit found that the issues raised by the petitioners—the threat of burdensome discovery and concerns regarding separation of powers—were “better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation.” The Ninth Circuit said the request for relief from potentially burdensome discovery was “entirely premature” because the district court had not issued a single discovery order and the plaintiffs had not filed a single motion to compel discovery. The Ninth Circuit also said it was “not persuaded that simply allowing the usual legal processes to go forward” would threaten the separation of powers. The opinion noted that Congress had not exempted the government from the normal rules of appellate procedure, “which anticipate that sometimes defendants will incur burdens of litigating cases that lack merit but still must wait for the normal appeals process to contest rulings against them.” In addition, the Ninth Circuit found that the conceded absence of controlling precedent weighed strongly against finding clear error in the district court’s denial of the motion to dismiss. The Ninth Circuit also said that the novelty of the issues presented did not warrant the relief sought because the denial of the motion to dismiss did not present a risk that the issues would evade appellate review.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals scheduled oral argument for Monday, December 11 on the United States’ petition for writ of mandamus seeking to bar the climate lawsuit filed by young people and “future generations” from proceeding in federal district court in Oregon. In November 2016, the district court denied motions to dismiss the action, allowing public trust and due process claims to proceed. After unsuccessfully seeking permission for interlocutory appeal, the United States filed the petition for writ of mandamus, arguing that the district court committed clear error in denying the motions to dismiss and was acting outside its jurisdiction.

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