A group of young climate activists attempted to put the Trump administration’s energy agenda on trial in Montana this week.
In two days of hearings in a packed federal courtroom in Missoula, the plaintiffs and a slew of expert witnesses testified that three of President Trump’s executive orders aimed at “unleashing” American energy violated their Constitutional rights to life and liberty.
The president’s efforts to quash clean energy sources like wind and solar while promoting fossil fuels, they said, would exacerbate the climate crisis, causing air pollution near their homes and creating more of the greenhouse gases that are warming the planet.
Five of the plaintiffs, ranging in age from 11 to 20 years old, and two with severe lung conditions, testified about the effects of wildfires, heat and coal dust. They asked Judge Dana L. Christensen to issue a preliminary injunction stopping federal agencies from implementing the orders until their case is heard.
Julia Olson, their lead lawyer, said the case revolved around one simple and sweeping question: “Does the United States Constitution guard against executive abuses of power by executive orders that deprive children and youth of their fundamental rights?”
But lawyers for the government countered that the case, Lighthiser v. Trump, was actually an effort to overrule the results of the 2024 presidential election. They have asked Judge Christensen to throw out the lawsuit.
Michael Sawyer, the lead lawyer for the Justice Department, said the plaintiffs had improperly brought a political dispute over energy policy into the courts. He said the government’s stance on energy should be debated by elected officials, not judges. He argued that the remedy sought by the plaintiffs — a judicial order blocking a broad range of actions — would hamstrung the executive and legislative branches.
Mr. Sawyer said that, in effect, the plaintiffs were asking a single judge to supervise national energy policy. “This is, at its core, an anti-democratic lawsuit,” he said.
Ms. Olson is the founder of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon-based legal nonprofit that has brought numerous other cases on behalf of youth plaintiffs. The group’s most prominent case, Juliana v. United States, was filed in 2015 in federal court in Eugene, Ore., and was litigated for years before being dismissed in an appeals-court ruling that found the defendants lacked “standing,” or the legal right to bring the case.
In March, the Supreme Court declined to vacate that decision, dealing the case its final blow. And this week in Montana, much of the debate revolved around whether the current case, Lighthiser, was essentially a reprise of the Juliana case.
Ms. Olson contended that the Montana case is far narrower. The Juliana case asked the government to review decades of energy policy and come up with a plan to fight climate change. The Montana case focuses on three presidential executive orders that, she said, would inflict harm.
“This case is not about mere policy preferences,” she said. “Our Constitution places limits on presidential power and those limits are being tested here.”
One interesting wrinkle was that the Juliana case had been opposed by both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations.
John Podesta, a longtime Democratic adviser on climate issues who held senior positions in the Biden, Obama and Clinton administrations, testified this week that he believed that the two cases were very different. Juliana, he said, sought a “sweeping” change. But the Montana lawsuit “is a classic injunction-type case,” where three specific actions, the three presidential executive orders, “violated the life and liberties and well-being of these plaintiffs,” so they are asking for the orders to be blocked.
Some of the plaintiffs from Juliana are suing again in Lighthiser, including Avery McRae, 20, who testified in Missoula on Tuesday. She spoke about caring for a beloved horse during wildfires in her native Oregon and then escaping hurricanes in Florida, where she goes to college.
Seeing so many disasters, she said, had made her hesitant to think about having children of her own. “I don’t even know what my future looks like,” she said.
Erik Van de Stouwe of the Justice Department, in his cross-examination of Ms. McRae, asked about the greenhouse gas emissions from raising horses. Later, Mr. Podesta suggested that the government had confused horses with cows (which, because of the way their digestive tract works, belch large amounts of methane), prompting laughter from the gallery.
During his final argument, Mr. Sawyer went back to the question of livestock. If the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction was granted, he said, future plaintiffs could seek injunctions for any activity that caused greenhouse gas emissions — even raising cows.
He then questioned why Ms. McRae chose to attend college on the opposite coast, necessitating air travel, which burns fossil fuels and emits planet-warming greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. “If she’s injured by every additional ton of emissions” of greenhouse gases, he said, why are emissions from her air travel acceptable, “but the emissions that put dinner on the table of a coal miner’s family not allowed to proceed?” he said.
The three presidential executive orders in question declared a “national energy emergency,” directed federal government agencies to “unleash” American energy, and aimed to reinvigorate the “beautiful clean coal industry.” They have formed the basis for myriad government actions or proposals since President Trump took office, such as pulling permits for wind projects, changing vehicle and appliance emissions standards and opening up public lands to oil and gas drilling.
The plaintiffs called a number of other expert witnesses, including Mark Z. Jacobson, an energy-systems engineer at Stanford University, and Geoffrey Heal, an economist and professor emeritus at Columbia University, who testified about what they predicted would be the deleterious effects of Mr. Trump’s positions on energy and environment.
Ms. Olson also discussed what she called the administration’s efforts to dismantle climate science and reconsider one of the federal government’s strongest tools for regulating greenhouse gases, a scientific conclusion at the Environmental Protection Agency known as the endangerment finding, which determined that planet-warming emissions endanger human health and therefore must be regulated by the government.
She argued that the Trump administration had undertaken “a deliberate effort to blind the nation to the consequences” of its policies, for example by cutting funds and staff for the National Climate Assessment, the flagship federal report on global warming.
Judge Christensen did not say when he would issue his rulings on either motion. And he was clearly struggling with the question of how he could issue an injunction to stop the three executive orders, when the government for months has already been making broad changes based on those orders.
“I’m troubled by the practical effects of what you’re asking me to do,” the judge said to Ms. Olson. He asked her, would he have to monitor the administration’s activities and untangle which actions were based on the executive orders, and which weren’t? How would he enforce any injunction?
“I’m focusing on the remedy,” Judge Christensen said as the hearing drew to a close. “What is it that you want me to do?”