Attorneys for 18 California youths are asking the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to allow them to go forward with claims that climate change is already affecting them disproportionately. <\/p>\n
The youths, now 10 to 19 years old, argue that the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency discriminates against children by giving more weight to current economic concerns than to long-term health benefits of regulations when it considers policies. The legal nonprofit Our Children\u2019s Trust filed the original case<\/a> in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.<\/p>\n In February 2025, federal Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald dismissed that case, ruling the children had failed to show they were being discriminated against. \u201cClimate-related harms will be experienced relatively equally by all people \u2014 both in the United States and around the world \u2014 who are alive at the time of their impacts,\u201d he wrote in his decision.<\/p>\n Before a three-judge panel in San Francisco on Thursday, the children\u2019s attorney, Brianna Rosier Kabwika, argued the lower court shouldn\u2019t have dismissed it without letting the plaintiffs present evidence of how they are being harmed. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen EPA allows climate pollution, that is unequal treatment in and of itself because children are not the same as adults,\u201d Rosier Kabwika said. \u201cThe pollution that is in the air right now will impact whether they develop certain health conditions, and how those health conditions manifest themselves in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n Carbon dioxide, the most important gas changing the climate, stays in the atmosphere, absorbing heat for at least a century. Studies have also shown that children\u2019s bodies are more vulnerable to pollution, heat and trauma. Injuries that occur while they\u2019re developing can have different long-term effects than if they happened to them as adults. <\/p>\n Christopher Anderson, the Department of Justice lawyer representing the EPA, argued that while the agency does discount future effects in weighing regulations, that practice is not discriminatory and any link to resulting climate harms is speculative.<\/p>\n \u201cThe purpose of [discounting] is to treat future and present effects equally,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is based on empirical observations about behavior in economics … and economic theory that suggests that in order to treat present and future effects equally, you have to discount the monetary value of future effects,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n At the hearing, the 9th Circuit judges asked questions that \u201csuggested that they thought that the young people hadn\u2019t said enough to allege discrimination,\u201d Our Children\u2019s Trust co-director Mat dos Santos said. <\/p>\n He expects them to issue a decision in the next several months. <\/p>\n