Youths plead their case on climate change policies

Attorneys for 18 California youths are asking the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to allow them to go forward with claims that climate change is already affecting them disproportionately.

- By BLANCA BEGERT

ALLEN J. SCHABEN Los Angeles Times WILDFIRE smoke from the Palisades and Eaton fires blankets Los Angeles County on Jan. 8, 2025.

The youths, now 10 to 19 years old, argue that the 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’s Trust filed the original case in 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

In February 2025, federal Judge Michael W. Fitzgerald dismissed that case, ruling the children had failed to show they were being discriminated against. “Climate-related harms will be experienced relatively equally by all people — both in the United States and around the world — who are alive at the time of their impacts,” he wrote in his decision.

Before a three-judge panel in San Francisco on Thursday, the children’s attorney, Brianna Rosier Kabwika, argued the lower court shouldn't have dismissed it without letting the plaintiffs present evidence of how they are being harmed.