By Amanda Bronstad, From The National Law Journal

Prominent California plaintiffs firm Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy has filed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. government has deprived “future generations” of their constitutional rights by allowing climate change to occur.

The suit, filed on Wednesday (12), claims that President Obama and seven departments of the U.S. government, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy, have known since 1965 about the health dangers of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels. Despite reports in 1990 and 1991 that proposed plans to reduce those emissions, the government has continued to promote and allow fossil fuel use, the suit says. Such actions, the complaint says, violate the Fifth Amendment right of future generations to “life, liberty and property,” and to “unenumerated rights” under the Ninth Amendment, as well as the doctrine of public trust.

“Here, the federal government concedes and has conceded since at least 1990, if not earlier, that continuing down the fossil fuel path will cause an extremely unstable climate and present a country that is virtually uninhabitable for the youngest generation and future generations,” said principal Philip Gregory, whose Burlingame, California-based firm obtained a record $1.15 billion judgment last year against several lead paint companies to set up an abatement program for nine California’s cities and municipalities.

Spokespersons from the Justice Department and the DOE did not respond to requests for comment.

An EPA spokeswoman defended Obama’s Climate Action Plan in an email: “A child born today will turn 15 in the year 2030—the year when the full benefits of the Clean Power Plan will be realized. The actions we take now will clear the way for that child—and kids everywhere—to learn, play, and grow up in a world that’s not only clean and safe, but full of opportunity.”

In addition to constitutional violations, the suit seeks injunctive relief in the form of a national plan that would reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million by 2100—an amount environmental advocates consider to be safe.

The suit was filed on behalf of 21 children in 10 states; Earth Guardians, a Boulder, Colorado-based nonprofit environmental organization; and Dr. James Hansen, director of the climate science, awareness and solutions program at Columbia University, who represents “future generations.” The former director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, Hansen testified in the 1980s to Congress about global warming, according to the complaint.

One 15-year-old plaintiff, referred to as Xiuhtezcatl Tonatiuh M., said climate change has affected his home in Boulder by creating wildfires, drought, declining snowpack, and extreme flooding.

The case was filed in federal court in Oregon, where the Department of Energy on June 22 approved air permits for the export of liquefied natural gas from the Jordan Cove LNG export terminal in the international port of Coos Bay, the complaint says.

Cotchett Pitre has partnered with the legal team of Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit organization in Eugene, Oregon, that focuses on human rights and environmental justice.

IMAGE: Credit: rivalstrife/iStockphoto.com

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202734830892/Suit-Alleges-US-Environmental-Policy-Harms-Children#ixzz3j4uH0Dba