Legal Insurrection by Leslie Eastman Wednesday, October 12, 2022
The file includes stories about each plaintiff that describes how the climate crisis has impacted them personally.A lawsuit filed by 16 children against Montana that argues the state’s continuous use of fossil fuels has contributed to the climate crisis will go to trial in June of 2023.
This will be the first children’s climate trial in US history, which will see the young plaintiffs argue how the state is violating their constitutional rights.
The lawsuit, filed in March 2020, describes how children are more vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, noting it ‘harms their physical and psychological health and safety, interferes with family and cultural foundations and integrity, and causes economic deprivations.’
It also includes how each child has been personally impacted by the climate crisis such how wildfires pose a threat to the youngest who has respiratory issues and another whose family relies on a river for their business that has dried up in past years.
The children are not looking for a lump sum of money, but, if the court rules in their favor, the group wants defendants to ‘bring the state energy system into constitutional compliance,’ the March 2020 filing states.
Montana’s lawyers have braced for a fight, and a Virginia judge recently nixed a similar case.
A spokesman for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R) called Our Children’s Trust a “special interest group that is exploiting well-intentioned kids—including a 4-year old and an 8-year old—to achieve its goal of shutting down responsible energy development in Montana.”
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/10/childrens-climate-trial-in-u-s-set-for-2023/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAPyiiICEas
