Federal judge dismisses Montana climate lawsuit

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A month ago, a group of young plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in federal court in Montana seeking to block the implementation of three executive orders that promote the use of fossil fuels under the guise of a fictional “energy emergency.” The plaintiffs were led by attorneys at Our Children’s Trust, a public interest law firm specializing in climate litigation. It was directly involved in Juliana v. United States and state-level climate litigation in Montana. It also represents juvenile plaintiffs in Wisconsin.

Our Children’s Trust describes itself as “a nonprofit public interest law firm that provides strategic, campaign-based legal services to young people from diverse backgrounds to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. We work to protect Earth’s climate system for current and future generations by engaging young people in global legal efforts for a healthy environment and sustainable communities and representing actionable legal rights.”

He represented a group of young plaintiffs who sued the state of Montana to enforce its constitutional guarantee of a clean and healthy environment and won. They have also filed a lawsuit in Wisconsin, claiming that the permitting process for new energy facilities illegally favors fossil fuels. That suit is pending.

Executive orders under attack in Montana

But the lawsuit filed last month in federal court in Montana was novel, asking the court to issue an injunction barring the administration from enforcing three executive orders.

“At a time when we need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, the federal government is actively setting us up with these executive orders designed to get us off fossil fuels.” Guardian. “It is incredibly important for us to fight back against these unconstitutional attacks on our rights to life and liberty.”

During the preliminary hearing, some of the plaintiffs testified to the court and they were joined by five expert witnesses and six fact witnesses, including Columbia environmental economist Jeffrey Hale, Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson, global environmental expert Steven Running, and John Podesta, a former senior adviser to Clean Energy Baden.

“I am proud to speak on behalf of these young plaintiffs about the devastating impact of these executive orders,” Podesta said in a statement. “Plaintiffs make a compelling case that these orders will only worsen the climate crisis, endangering the health, safety and economic well-being of these young people, as well as their families and communities.”

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Christensen was clearly uncomfortable with the proceedings in her courtroom, which included a confluence of many legal theories, some tracing back to the Constitution itself. “What do you want to do?” He asked the lawyers for the plaintiffs. The judge indicated that he would proceed cautiously in a case that would almost certainly be heard by a federal appeals court and perhaps even by the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to The Daily Montananthe judge said, “If I order these orders, and these defendants enact policies in favor of fossil fuels, regardless of what I do? A lot of work by these agencies…is derived from or will be based on these orders.…Do you want me to make these agencies work with them as well?”

The plaintiffs’ lead attorney, Julia Olsen, said the goal was to return the country to the “status quo” that existed on Jan. 19, a day before the three executive orders were signed that day. “The entire body of conduct must be enjoined, as it is unconstitutional and causing irreparable harm to these plaintiffs.”

Christensen suspected that, if he granted the injunction sought by the plaintiffs, it would require him to review every energy-related policy and action by multiple government agencies until our collective lives expire. “

Judge dismisses climate lawsuit in Montana

This week, Judge Christensen issued his ruling, in which he dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint, though he said he was “reluctant” to do so. He said he was convinced the testimony presented by the plaintiffs showed that the executive orders would accelerate climate change and increase risks to the health and safety of the plaintiffs.

But he ruled that the plaintiffs lacked a legal basis to bring suit, largely because their alleged damages could not be mitigated by a court order. The New York Times. He said the suit was simply too broad in scope and too arbitrary to be viable. “Plaintiffs are effectively asking that this court order the United States to return to the previous administration’s environmental policy,” he wrote.

A request for an injunction to block all three of these executive orders would require the court to oversee “an infinite number” of federal agencies and determine whether their actions contravene the court’s ruling. “This is, quite simply, an untenable claim for which plaintiffs provide no precedent,” the judge wrote.

In other words, the plaintiffs won the argument but lost the legal battle. This was not unexpected. The constitutional framework under which America has operated for the past 250 years gives Congress the power to make laws and the executive the power to enforce laws. The power of the courts is limited to the interpretation of laws. At least, that’s how Ben Franklin and his friends envisioned things.

But Ben was a wily old fellow and knew that there would be those who would try to twist and bend the Constitution to favor others in their favour. After the Constitution was drafted, he told the people that the Framers had given the people a republic, then added, “If you can keep it.”

Today, a half-century-long process led by Charles and David Koch to bend the Constitution to their liking has succeeded. Congress has happily abdicated its authority under the Constitution to the executive, and now the Supreme Court is filled with right-wing extremists who also believe that the executive branch is all-powerful. Judge Christensen didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the winds were blowing in America.

He is right that any court will shrink from deciding a matter in a way that cannot be enforced. But the judge had a lever available to him. When the United States was formed, it adopted British common law as the basis of the legal system for the new country.

Origin of equity power

Legal scholars know that at times in British history, law courts became mired in minutia to the point where justice was often denied because the practice was deemed so criminal that prosecutions required years of delay. To combat the hidden law courts, people began to turn to the ecclesiastical courts for relief.

Although these courts theoretically dealt only with religious beliefs, they created the concept of equity—the idea that the law should do more than interpret arcane rules, it should also do justice. This is the basis of “equal justice under the law” and is where the power of courts to issue injunctions, controlling orders and the rights of mandamus originate.

In other words, equity is the power of courts to require others to act or to refrain from acting if doing so would be unjust. Judge Christensen could have invoked the court’s inherent equity power to find that the executive orders violated the very foundation of the laws in America. There is an expression familiar to him, “To obtain equity, one must first have equity. Loosely translated, this means that you cannot kill your parents and then beg for mercy because you are an orphan.”

The current administration has killed democracy and does not deserve to be looked into by the courts until it considers its controversial and outrageous conduct. If I were in Judge Christensen’s position, I would probably rule the same way he did. It is safe and sensible.

But a brave judge will invoke the equity power of the court to attack executive orders that are manifestly unjust and unjust. The Court has the inherent power to create an apparatus of the Court, consisting of persons employed by the Court, to administer and enforce its judgment. In a perfect world, that’s exactly what would happen.