Sagoonick v. State

An Alaska Superior Court dismissed a lawsuit brought by young plaintiffs who sought to block the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Project on the grounds that it would exacerbate climate change and thereby violate their rights under the Alaska Constitution. The plaintiffs also sought a declaratory judgment that they had a “fundamental right to a climate system that sustains human life, liberty, and dignity” under Article VIII and Article I, Section 7 of the Alaska Constitution. The court concluded that Alaska Supreme Court precedent in Kanuk ex rel. Kanuk v. State (2014) and Sagoonick v. State (2022) addressed “substantially similar facts and legal theories” and dictated the dismissal of the claims in this case as barred by the political question doctrine and on prudential grounds. The Superior Court said the plaintiffs “impermissibly ask this Court to substitute its own policy judgment for that of the legislature, which … has determined that promotion of the Alaska LNG Project is in the best interest of Alaskans.” The Superior Court cited “prudential grounds” for denying the declaratory relief and further noted that the political question doctrine would bar judicial enforcement of any declaratory judgment. The court wrote that although the plaintiffs might be “frustrated” by elected officials’ policy choices, “they may not utilize the courts to undercut a valid exercise of the legislature’s Article VIII powers.”

Youth plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in Alaska Superior Court asserting that statutory provisions requiring the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation to advance and develop the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Project violate the plaintiffs’ public trust and substantive due process rights under the Alaska Constitution. The plaintiffs alleged that Alaska was “already in a state of climate disruption,” and that the Alaska LNG Project’s intended 30 years of operations “would ensure continuing and substantially elevated levels of climate pollution for decades, locking in increasing and worsening harms to Youth Plaintiffs,” who would be “uniquely vulnerable to and disproportionately injured by the climate harms” from the project. They alleged that “[e]very additional ton of climate pollution” would further disrupt the climate system and harm the plaintiffs. Alleged harms included temperature increases, heatwaves, and other heat-related changes; thawing permafrost; changing precipitation patterns, extreme weather events, and drought; loss of sea, river, and lake ice; ocean acidification; melting glaciers and sea level rise; and increasingly frequent and severe wildfires and smoke. The plaintiffs seek a declaratory judgment that the provisions violate their public trust rights to equal access to public trust resources and to sustained yield of public trust resources free from substantial impairment, as well as declarations that they have a fundamental right to a climate system that sustains human life, liberty, and dignity and that the statutory provisions violate that right. In addition, the plaintiffs ask the court to enjoin the defendants from taking further actions to advance or develop the Alaska LNG Project.