Genesis B. v. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

The plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the Ninth Circuit after the district court ruled that they did not have standing for their claims that EPA’s use of federal discounting policies discriminated against children by putting a “thumb on the scale against urgent and ambitious regulatory programs to reduce climate pollution, and in favor of taking less ambitious actions in the present.”

The federal district court for the Central District of California granted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal defendants’ motion to dismiss youth plaintiffs’ amended complaint alleging that EPA utilization of federal policies regarding the use of discount rates in benefit-cost analysis violated the Constitution. The court said the plaintiffs based their “theory of harm” on EPA’s utilization of “Discounting Policies” (the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular No. A-4 and related EPA guidance) as part of OMB-mandated benefit-cost analyses; the plaintiffs alleged that the Discounting Policies under-weighted long-term benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in discrimination against children and in environmental harm to the plaintiffs due to failure to resolve the climate crisis. The court found the plaintiffs did not demonstrate that the environmental harms were fairly traceable to the Discounting Policies and that their alleged discrimination harms amounted to “generalized grievances” that did not constitute injury-in-fact. The court therefore dismissed the amended complaint for lack of standing. The court dismissed without leave to amend, finding that the amended complaint demonstrated that further amendment could not overcome “the structural lack of injury-in-fact and traceability” as to the plaintiffs’ claims. The court therefore dismissed without leave to amend.

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The federal district court for the Central District of California found that youth plaintiffs failed to establish standing in their putative class action alleging that EPA and its administrator violated their constitutional rights by allowing “dangerous levels of climate pollution” to accumulate in the atmosphere. The court stated that <a href="https://climatecasechart.com/case/juliana-v-united-states/">Juliana v. United States</a>—in which the Ninth Circuit held that youth plaintiffs lacked redressability in their constitutional climate case against federal defendants—was “on all fours with this action.” The court found that, as in Juliana, the declaratory relief sought by the plaintiffs was unlikely to address their injuries, which included “economic harms, displacement, psychological harms, barriers to family formation, health impacts, educational deprivation, cultural and religious deprivation, and a diminished ability to seek happiness and an open future.” The court said the “only relief that could arguably mitigate Plaintiffs’ injuries is a judgment declaring Defendants’ use of discriminatory discount rates as unconstitutional”; the court further concluded, however, that the argument that ceasing to use such rates would result in EPA abating climate pollution based on best available science was “speculative” and that such a result “would require further court action.” The court was not persuaded by the plaintiffs’ efforts to distinguish Juliana or by arguments that Juliana was wrongly decided or that a 2021 Supreme Court decision concerning nominal damages supported the plaintiffs’ argument that declaratory relief could sufficiently redress an ongoing or impending injury. The court expressed skepticism that the plaintiffs could amend their allegations to demonstrate redressability, especially given the Ninth Circuit’s recent mandamus order directing the Juliana district court to dismiss that case. But the court granted the plaintiffs “one more chance” to amend the complaint.

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