Plaintiffs' equal protection claim rests on alleged interference with their right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life—a right the Court has already held to be fundamental.

The District Court denied the Government's dispositive motions, stating that "[t] his action is of a different order than the typical environmental case. It alleges that defendants' actions and inactions-whether or not they violate any specific statutory duty-have so profoundly damaged our home planet that they threaten plaintiffs' fundamental constitutional rights to life and …

The plaintiffs asserted that the federal government, “[b] y their exercise of sovereign authority over our country's atmosphere and fossil fuel resources, permitted, encouraged, and otherwise enabled continued exploitation, production, and combustion of fossil fuels,... deliberately allow [ing] atmospheric [carbon dioxide] concentrations to escalate to levels unprecedented …

United States, the US District Court for the District of Oregon ruled that a group of young environmental activists between the ages of eight and nineteen (plaintiffs) had standing to assert substantive due process and public trust claims against the US government based on its failure to adopt adequate measures to decrease the country's reliance on fossil fuels and reduce …

To wit,[F] irst, the property subject to the trust must not only be used for a public purpose, but it must be held available for use by the general public; second, the property may not be sold, even for a fair cash equivalent; and third, the property must be maintained for particular types of uses.

As the Court noted in the November 2016 Order, climate science and our ability to understand the effects of climate change are constantly evolving.

Following that argument, in November 2016, the Court issued an opinion and order adopting Judge Coffin's F & R and denying the motions to dismiss.

To hold otherwise would be to say that the Constitution affords no protection against a government's knowing decision to poison the air its citizens breathe or the water its citizens drink.

As the district judge described, the questions of energy policy at stake here may have rippling effects on foreign policy considerations, but that is not enough to wholly exempt the subject matter from our review.