(C) Common Dreams
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Joe Biden’s DOJ Is Claiming “There Is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate” [1]

['David Sirota', 'Matthew Cunningham-Cook', 'David Broder', 'Alexander Zaitchik', 'Alex N. Press', 'Matt Huber', 'Julia Rock']

Date: 2023-08

As a heat wave scorched America with record-breaking temperatures this June, the Biden administration attempted to block a landmark climate lawsuit by declaring that “there is no constitutional right to a stable climate system,” according to court records reviewed by the Lever.

The assertion in Juliana v. United States — which echoed both the Donald Trump and Barack Obama administrations’ legal claims in the same long-running case — was part of the Justice Department’s latest attempt to halt the suit brought by children who assert that the Constitution requires the federal government to maintain a climate that supports human life.

That suit’s momentum could be bolstered by a separate legal victory in Montana this week, but neither the victory nor the intensifying climate disaster appear to have stopped the Biden administration’s crusade to kill the federal case. Indeed, Biden’s Justice Department filed its most recent motion to dismiss the case in the same week that large swaths of the country were under extreme heat warnings.

That filing came as President Joe Biden has refused repeated calls to declare a climate emergency, and as his administration backed a court case designed to accelerate the construction of a massive fossil gas pipeline, despite scientists’ climate warnings. Biden’s administration has also declared that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scientific report about climate change “does not present sufficient cause” to halt a massive expansion of fossil fuel drilling.

“It is deeply disheartening to see the Biden administration claim that Americans have ‘no constitutional right to a stable climate,’” Julia Olson, lead counsel for the Juliana plaintiffs, told the Lever. “When President Biden ran for office, he promised America’s youth that he would take bold action to combat climate change, but instead the United States is leading the world on producing fossil fuels, the very thing that is furthering climate change. Instead of fighting these young people at every turn, the US Department of Justice should let youth have their day in court.”

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[1] Url: https://jacobin.com/2023/08/joe-biden-justice-department-climate-crisis-constitutional-right-julianna-v-us

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