‘An unworkable request:’ Federal judge dismisses climate lawsuit

A federal judge in Missoula dismissed a youth-led climate change lawsuit challenging several presidential executive orders on the grounds the district court did not have jurisdiction to provide the sweeping relief asked for by the plaintiffs. 

Judge Dana Christensen on Wednesday issued an order “reluctantly” dismissing Lighthiser v. Trump, saying the scope of the requests made by 22 young people seeking relief from fossil fuel-driven climate change was “an unworkable request.”

“While this Court is certainly troubled by the very real harms presented by climate change and the Challenged EOs’ effect on carbon dioxide emissions, this concern does not automatically confer upon it the power to act,” Christensen wrote. 

Granting the plaintiffs request to roll back executive orders and subsequent agency actions would require the court to “monitor an untold number of federal agency actions to determine whether they contravene its injunction,” the order wrote. “This is, quite simply, an unworkable request.”

Lighthiser v. Trump is the latest of a series of youth-led climate change lawsuits brought by Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based advocacy law firm. 

Judges at the federal level have similarly dismissed other cases brought by the organization, namely Juliana v. United States, which Christensen cited extensively in his order. 

But other state-focused cases with youth plaintiffs have been successful. In 2023, a district court judge in Montana ruled in favor of plaintiffs in Held v. Montana, which found Montanans have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment that is infringed on if the state ignores potential impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Youth won another case in Hawaii against that state’s Department of Transportation. 

Plaintiffs from Juliana and Held, along with youth from Florida, California, Hawaii and Oregon, joined together in Lighthiser to sue the Trump administration over the president’s executive orders aimed at supporting the fossil fuel industry, curbing renewable energy and suppressing climate science.

During a two-day hearing in September, attorneys for the plaintiffs argued for an injunction against the three orders, as well as an order halting roughly a dozen federal agencies from implementing any policies related to the orders. 

Meanwhile, the Justice Department, backed by several states including Montana, which joined the lawsuit, argued Christensen should dismiss the case, saying plaintiffs lacked standing and were asking the court to set federal environmental policy. 

“It’s unprecedented,” federal attorney Michael Sawyer said during the hearing. “There is no basis in law for stepping in and going back,” to a previous administration’s policies. 

Several youth plaintiffs testified to the harms they suffer from climate change, including increased experiences with environmental disasters, respiratory issues exacerbated by wildfires and heat waves, and concerns that their future families and careers could be jeopardized by federal actions. 

 In addition, many expert witnesses testified as well, including Steven Running, a renowned climate scientist who said every additional ton of greenhouse gas emissions would hasten climate change, and the plaintiffs’ injuries. 

In his order, Christensen said the court was presented with “overwhelming evidence that the climate is changing at a staggering pace, and that this change stems from the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, caused by the production and burning of fossil fuels.”

The court record, he wrote “demonstrates that climate change and the exposure from fossil fuels presents a children’s health emergency,” and that implementing Trump’s executive orders “will increase the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby exacerbating the harms plaintiffs experience from an already-warming climate.”

But despite his findings that the plaintiffs adequately showed they have injuries that can be concretely traced to increased fossil fuel production as sought by the federal government, their requests for relief exceeded the court’s authority, a concern he had raised during the hearing.

“At the heart of Plaintiffs’ request is that the Court wind back the clock to the regulatory framework that existed on January 19, 2025,” Christensen wrote. 

And while preventing an estimated 205 million metric tons of annual greenhouse gas emissions tied to the executive orders is enough to consider addressing the complaint, Christensen said it would be nearly impossible to “scrutinize every climate-related agency action taken” by the federal government to determine if it was following an injunction. 

“Plaintiffs effectively seek to enjoin not just three executive orders, but also tens — if not hundreds — of policy decisions, regulations and projects promulgated by 12 Federal agencies,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs’ request effectively amounts to hundreds of lawsuits being brought in a single case.”

Julia Olson, chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust, said the legal team would appeal Christensen’s decision. 

“Every day these executive orders remain in effect, these 22 young Americans suffer irreparable harm to their health, safety, and future. The judge recognized that the government’s fossil fuel directives are injuring these youth, but said his hands were tied by precedent,” Olson said in a press release. “We will appeal—because courts cannot offer more protection to fossil fuel companies seeking to preserve their profits than to young Americans seeking to preserve their rights. This violates not only the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, but the most basic principles of justice.“

Spokespeople for the Department of Justice and the White House did not respond to a request for comment due to being furloughed in the government shutdown, while the White House did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. The Montana Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. 

The Lighthiser suit named Trump as a defendant along with 11 federal agencies and their respective agency heads, including the Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Environmental Protection Agency and NASA. 

The challenged orders included Trump Executive Orders 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” 14156, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” and 14261, “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry.”