I mean, that is in fact not a US constitutional right
But proclaim the fucking emergency anyway!
The suit filed “claim to a fundamental constitutional right to be free of CO2 emissions.”
Free of CO2 emission. That’s both beautiful and wildly impractical. If you file a lawsuit with foolish demands you should expect to get resistance. IIRC there’s something like a Trillion dollars set aside in the IRA for emissions/ghg reduction strategies - directly or indirectly- across the board.
Then we need to try again with better definitions.
Folks in the comments are making assumptions about what’s in the Constitution, so I decided to go take a look. If I were the petitioners, I’d point to section 1 of the 14th Amendment:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Depriving someone of clean air to breathe is depriving them of life. The medical conditions from being exposed to unclean air threaten property through medical bills in a country without universal healthcare. And finally, liberty cannot exist without life.
And since a lot of folks are going for the technically correct legislative analysis, remember that bad air causes autoimmune disorders, and thus abridge the immunities of the citizens of the United States. A stretch, but I’d say it qualifies if you’re analyzing the law from a purely textual standpoint.
Can I just say I absolutely love the 14th amendment? It’s not the Declaration of Independence, but it does a lot of heavy lifting for it in the Constitution.
Montana’s young people have set a precedent. We can build on this and demand the same on a federal level.
They built their case around a clause in the state constitution which guarantees the right to a clean and healthful environment. It takes something more to win at the US federal level where there isn’t a clause like that.
People who are saying “this is technically correct” forget that The 9nth amendment says this
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Which is to say, Just because a right isn’t explicitly enumerated in the constitution does not mean the people don’t retain that right. I would think the right to not have the planet not be destroyed by Fossil Fuel Companies would fall under that, along with clean and and water and all the rest.
And they are correct.
That seems like a problem
I think it’s okay that the constitution doesn’t cover natural climate change. But human made climate change is a whole other story to me.
Aside from the fact that “Joe Biden’s” DOJ is correct here, the fact that both this case and this argument were originally established in 2015 under the Obama administration is what truly makes this article outrage clickbait.
Anarcho-Bidenism isn’t looking too good now.
Not sure people ever saw him that way. More like a way to make common cause with moderates so we could get a lot, even if we couldn’t get everything.
They could literally just step aside and let the courts determine that right, but no the admin of the “21st century FDR” has gotta expend energy on this fucking hell
Yup. We can’t control the climate. Life liberty and shade?
