Appealing for our Future
I have just arrived in Portland, Oregon, and tomorrow I’ll be attending a federal appellate court hearing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where a panel of three Judges will hear the appeal that I have filed with 21 other young people from all over the United States in the case Lighthiser v. Trump. Our lawsuit takes issue with three of the President’s January 2025 Executive Orders that aim to unleash fossil fuel use, block renewable energy development, suppress climate science, and, bottom line, worsen the climate crisis.
Our case has already achieved an unprecedented milestone in U.S. legal history by facilitating the first time a federal court heard live, in-person testimony in a constitutional climate lawsuit brought by young people. For two days in September 2025, in Missoula, Montana, our case made history when, for the first time in U.S. history, youth plaintiffs provided live, in-person testimony in a constitutional climate case against the federal government.
During the hearing, we presented expert testimony on public health, climate science, and economics that went unrebutted by the Trump administration. Rather than attempt to dispute the facts we presented, the Trump administration presented no witnesses and sat silent.
District Court Judge Christensen dismissed the case on October 15, 2025, but did so, in his view, for lack of jurisdiction (redressability). However, the court’s order explicitly found that “climate change and the exposure from fossil fuels presents a children’s health emergency” and that the challenged executive orders cause, or contribute to, the plaintiffs’ injuries.
It’s estimated that there have been over 450 legal challenges to the Trump administration’s second term, yet our case is often seen as unique given its direct, specific focus on his three executive orders seeking to “unleash” fossil fuels, and has drawn an unusually large number of interventions from 18 state governments and Guam. Many legal scholars believe that, despite the Circuit Court’s earlier dismissal, the judge provided very detailed guidance for designing future cases that can overcome the challenges our case faced.
With these milestones in mind, my co-plaintiffs and I are excited about this next step, our federal appeal. One reason for our excitement is the important role the judicial branch must play as one of the three equal branches of our government (Executive, Legislative, and Judicial) as a constitutional safeguard. Aside from our attempt to reverse the President’s shortsighted embrace of fossil fuels, our case is a test of executive power trying to exceed its lawful bounds. When executive actions threaten Americans’ fundamental rights, including the right to a livable future, we believe the courts have a responsibility to review them and, where necessary, declare them unlawful. At its core, this case asks a simple but urgent question: can our President knowingly accelerate climate harm and silence the science without consequence? It’s a question whose answer will impact every American, along with the citizens of the world beyond our shores.
If you are in Portland, Oregon, you can join us in solidarity on Monday, April 13th, at the courthouse at 7:45 AM PST (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit: 700 SW 6th Ave, Portland, OR 97204).
And speaking of important, it’s important that we all confront the reality of what the President and his Administration are doing to our fragile, irreplaceable natural environment every single day right now. What we are witnessing is not policy in any ordinary sense but a wholesale assault on nature and a systematic dismantling of environmental protections at a scale and speed unlike any we have seen in the 250 years since our country was founded.
Just a few examples of the Administration’s assault on our natural environment during his second term include:
1. Retreating from international climate leadership (United Nations’ Paris Agreement and COP Conferences) and weakening global cooperation at a time when coordinated action is essential.
2. Passing Executive Orders that expand fossil fuel extraction on public lands and offshore areas, as well as prioritize short-term energy production over long-term environmental stability and climate safety.
3. Moving to narrow the scope of cornerstone environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Clean Air Act, which have protected public health and ecosystems for decades.
4. Pushing federal agencies to fast-track permits for fossil fuel infrastructure, accelerating approvals for pipelines, liquid natural gas (LNG) export terminals, and drilling projects, often with reduced environmental review under laws like NEPA.
5. Taking efforts to roll back or undermine federal support for renewable energy, including barriers to wind and solar deployment that slow the transition away from fossil fuels.
6. Suppressing and politicizing climate science, including limiting the role of federal scientists, sidelining scientific reports, restricting the communication of climate risks to the public, and removing the National Climate Assessments from the internet.
7. Cutting programs and funding aimed at climate resilience, environmental justice, and clean energy deployment.
8. Rescinding the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Endangerment Finding, the scientific and legal foundation that recognizes greenhouse gases as dangerous to human health and welfare, potentially eliminating the federal government’s authority to regulate climate pollution at all.
9. Reviving the “God Squad” (Endangered Species Committee comprised of select members from the administration’s Cabinet), who have exempted the oil and gas industry from Endangered Species Act (ESA) rules within the Gulf of Mexico, putting more than two dozen endangered species at risk including the critically endangered Rice’s whale (there are only a few dozen such whales left).
These actions form an obvious pattern of prioritizing fossil fuel expansion over scientific reality, silencing expertise, and placing present-day politically connected economic interests above the constitutional rights of young people and of all future generations of our incredible country.
For communities like mine in South Florida, and for so many others around the world, this assault is deeply personal. It is rising seas flooding our region, saltwater infiltrating our drinking water, coral reefs bleaching to the point of functional extinction, entire ecosystems collapsing, and ever-growing dangers to human health in a warming world.
These are examples of why we are asking the judicial branch to stop the damage. They are also examples of why I am, once again, traveling nearly 3,300 miles across the country. My 21 friends and I hope that the three judges in Portland will show America the wisdom to stop the madness and, in doing so, help us protect the future.
When our executive and legislative branches so overtly fail to act or, worse, when they actively declare war on America’s precious environment by deepening the crisis, our beautiful Constitution must never sit silent.
It, and our judicial branch, must endure.
And so must we.
Our environment and our future deserve nothing less.
