Juliana v. US: Hardly Child’s Play

…not all meritorious legal claims are redressable in federal court.

More than four years ago, 21 youthful plaintiffs asked a federal court to rule a habitable environment a protected right under the US Constitution. On January 17, 2020, a divided three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told them they didn’t have standing to pursue their case and that there was nothing the court could do to redress the legitimate harms they had suffered:

Reluctantly, we conclude that such relief is beyond our constitutional power. Rather, the plaintiffs’ impressive case for redress must be presented to the political branches of government.

Early on, Juliana was often reported with a wink and a nod giving the impres-sion that it was a feel-good human-interest story about kids. As it survived one legal challenge after another, the case came to be recognized for what it could be — the most important environmental case of all time equal in stature to Brown v. Board of Education (school desegregation), Roe v. Wade (a woman’s right to an abortion), and Obergefell v. Hodges (the right of men and women to marry those they love even if of the same sex).

The environmental trial of the century now looks as if it is not meant to be. The young plaintiffs and their attorneys have announced their intention to pe-tition for…