Our Children's Trust in the movie: The Race to Save the World

 This is the 3rd part of my 4 part review of the movie The Race to Save the World.   (If you have not seen it and are curious to see it click here to buy a ticket and watch it.) This part is about the lawsuit shown in the movie conducted by Our Children's Trust.  As explained by Aji in the panel after the FACT showing of the movie - the organization Plant for the Planet, started by Michael Foster, brought children together and trained them to be Climate Ambassadors and to plant trees.   But eventually Michael met Andrea  the lead attorney for Our Children's Trust.  Andrea wanted to sue WA state on behalf of the children to try to secure their future. In 2011 Andrea filed two law suits one for kids in OR and one for kids in WA.  Michael agreed to have his two kids be leads on the case so it was Foster vs WA Dept of Ecology with a total of 13 kids.  This original law suit was to require the agency to use actual science and science based emissions reductions in their decision making process.

I remember sitting in one hearing.  Andrea Rodgers is a great attorney.  The female judge was also great.  But the female attorney for the Dept of Ecology could barely string sentences together and kept spewing jargon and RC numbers, so no one could follow her.   I remember thinking that they had someone of very low seniority, and perhaps not even a trial lawyer, defending them and wondering if perhaps Jay Inslee wanted to lose the case?  Dept of Ecology did eventually lose the case, but this did not seem to result in change because the Dept of Ecology just made the claim that they had to do what the legislature told them to do.  So then a second law suit started this time with Aji Piper from the movie as the lead plaintiff and again 13 kids.  This lawsuit made the claim that the state has a duty to protect the right to a healthy future for these children.  A similar lawsuit has been in filed for kids in all 50 states.  Most have been denied but 6 cases are still live.   This WA law suit is still going on 9 years later and a number of the "children" are no longer children - Aji for example the oldest is now 20.  Unfortunately, the case has been dismissed and Andrea is fighting for reconsideration - not looking good.  As Aji states on the panel Covid has slowed everything down.

In the meantime in 2015 the case Julina vs the US was filed against the federal government, Aji and 20 other youth are part of this lawsuit.  This case initially got good traction and two different judges denied motions to dismiss by the federal government.  In 2018 the 9th circuit set a trial date for the case to go ahead and in June 30th 2018 the Supreme Court even rejected a government motion to stay the trial. After endless back and forth's delaying the trial a sharply divided 3 judge circuit court grants they have many valid points, but 2 of the 3 say they should find legislative solutions.  This is appealed and the original judge orders a settlement hearing which is scheduled.  Now 13 Attorney generals from Republican states have filed to object to a settlement hearing because they do not want the Biden administration to enter into settlement (as many good legal precedents would be set.)

Stay tuned to see what will happen next....