Joe Biden’s DOJ Is Claiming “There Is No Constitutional Right to a Stable Climate”
In the same week large swaths of the US were under extreme heat warnings, Joe Biden’s Justice Department filed its most recent motion to dismiss a landmark climate case by arguing that nothing in the Constitution guarantees the right to a secure climate.
A heat advisory sign is shown along US highway 190 during a heat wave in Death Valley National Park in Death Valley, California, on July 16, 2023. (Ronda Churchill / AFP via Getty Images)
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.
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