PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a petition filed by young climate activists who argued that the federal government's role in climate change violated their constitutional rights, ending a decadelong legal battle that saw many of the plaintiffs grow from children and teenagers into adults.
The landmark case was filed in 2015 by 21 plaintiffs, the youngest 8 years old. They claimed the U.S. government's actions encouraging a fossil fuel economy violated their right to a life-sustaining climate.
The case — called Juliana v. United States after one of the activists, Kelsey Juliana — was challenged repeatedly by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, whose lawyers argued it sought to direct federal environmental and energy policies through the courts instead of the political process.
Julia Olson, chief legal counsel for Our Children's Trust, the nonprofit law firm that represented the plaintiffs, said the impact of the lawsuit “cannot be measured by the finality of this case alone.”
“Juliana sparked a global youth-led movement for climate rights that continues to grow," Olson said in a statement Monday. “It has empowered young people to demand their constitutional right to a safe climate and future. We’ve already secured important victories, and we will continue pushing forward.”
The plaintiffs wanted the court to hold a trial on whether the U.S. government was violating their fundamental rights to life and liberty by operating a fossil-fuel based energy system.
The case wound its way through the legal system for years. At one point in 2018, a trial was halted by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts just days before it was to begin.
In 2020, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the case dismissed, saying the job of determining the nation’s climate policies should fall to politicians, not judges. But U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Eugene, Oregon, instead allowed the activists to amend their lawsuit and ruled the case could go to trial.
Last year, acting on a request from the Biden administration, a three-judge 9th Circuit panel issued an order requiring Aiken to dismiss the case, and she did. The plaintiffs then sought, unsuccessfully, to revive the lawsuit through their petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Our Children's Trust, responding to new developments at the federal level, is now preparing a new federal action that is “rooted in the same constitutional principles that guided the Juliana case," Olson said.
The plaintiffs now range from 17 to 29 years old and have continued their climate advocacy to various degrees, Olson said, adding that some are still in university. About half are from hometowns in Oregon, according to Our Children's Trust's website.
“They all have incredible stories,” Olson said. “They're all doing incredible work.”
Juliana, who is now 29, became a primary school teacher in Oregon, said Helen Britto, associate communications director for Our Children's Trust. Other plaintiffs include Alex Loznak, who became a lawyer focused on environmental and immigration work, and Nathan Baring, who now serves as the program director of a reindeer herding association in Alaska.
“We’re part of a wave, so this is not the end of the road by any means,” Baring said of the high court's move.
Miko Vergun, who was born in the Marshall Islands and grew up in Beaverton, Oregon, is fighting for a future where the Pacific island nation can stay above sea level, according to Our Children's Trust's website. She recently graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in cultural anthropology, Britto said.
In Monday's statement, Vergun said the U.S. Supreme Court decision wasn’t what the plaintiffs had hoped for, but there had been “many wins along the way.”
“For almost ten years, we’ve stood up for the rights of present and future generations, demanding a world where we cannot only survive, but thrive," she said. "All great movements have faced obstacles, but what sets them apart is the perseverance of the people behind them. We’ve shown the world that young people will not be ignored, and I’m incredibly proud of the impact Juliana v. United States has made.”
Our Children's Trust has filed climate legal actions on behalf of young people in all 50 states, including active cases in Florida, Utah and Alaska.
In a Montana case, the state Supreme Court in December upheld a landmark climate ruling that said the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by permitting oil, gas and coal projects without regard for global warming, and that regulators must consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions when issuing permits for fossil fuel development.
The case, brought by 16 youth plaintiffs, had gone to trial in state district court in 2023. The Montana Constitution requires agencies to “maintain and improve” a clean environment.
The Montana Department of Environmental Quality, which issues permits for fossil fuel projects, has to abide by the state Supreme Court decision, Olson said, adding that Our Children's Trust will seek to enforce the ruling in the event it is violated.
In a Hawaii case brought by 13 youth over the threat of climate change, both sides reached a settlement last year that requires the state government to achieve zero emissions in its transportation system by 2045. The settlement agreement applies to ground transportation, as well as sea and air transportation between islands. The court will supervise the implementation of the agreement for the next 20 years.
Internationally, the Oregon case has inspired over 60 youth-led climate lawsuits across the world, according to Our Children's Trust.
FILE - Kelsey Juliana, of Eugene, Ore., greets climate supporters outside a federal courthouse, June 4, 2019, in Portland, Ore. (AP Photo/Andrew Selsky, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Becky Pepper-Jackson finished third in the discus throw in West Virginia last year though she was in just her first year of high school. Now a 15-year-old sophomore, Pepper-Jackson is aware that her upcoming season could be her last.
West Virginia has banned transgender girls like Pepper-Jackson from competing in girls and women's sports, and is among the more than two dozen states with similar laws. Though the West Virginia law has been blocked by lower courts, the outcome could be different at the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which has allowed multiple restrictions on transgender people to be enforced in the past year.
The justices are hearing arguments Tuesday in two cases over whether the sports bans violate the Constitution or the landmark federal law known as Title IX that prohibits sex discrimination in education. The second case comes from Idaho, where college student Lindsay Hecox challenged that state's law.
Decisions are expected by early summer.
President Donald Trump's Republican administration has targeted transgender Americans from the first day of his second term, including ousting transgender people from the military and declaring that gender is immutable and determined at birth.
Pepper-Jackson has become the face of the nationwide battle over the participation of transgender girls in athletics that has played out at both the state and federal levels as Republicans have leveraged the issue as a fight for athletic fairness for women and girls.
“I think it’s something that needs to be done,” Pepper-Jackson said in an interview with The Associated Press that was conducted over Zoom. “It’s something I’m here to do because ... this is important to me. I know it’s important to other people. So, like, I’m here for it.”
She sat alongside her mother, Heather Jackson, on a sofa in their home just outside Bridgeport, a rural West Virginia community about 40 miles southwest of Morgantown, to talk about a legal fight that began when she was a middle schooler who finished near the back of the pack in cross-country races.
Pepper-Jackson has grown into a competitive discus and shot put thrower. In addition to the bronze medal in the discus, she finished eighth among shot putters.
She attributes her success to hard work, practicing at school and in her backyard, and lifting weights. Pepper-Jackson has been taking puberty-blocking medication and has publicly identified as a girl since she was in the third grade, though the Supreme Court's decision in June upholding state bans on gender-affirming medical treatment for minors has forced her to go out of state for care.
Her very improvement as an athlete has been cited as a reason she should not be allowed to compete against girls.
“There are immutable physical and biological characteristic differences between men and women that make men bigger, stronger, and faster than women. And if we allow biological males to play sports against biological females, those differences will erode the ability and the places for women in these sports which we have fought so hard for over the last 50 years,” West Virginia's attorney general, JB McCuskey, said in an AP interview. McCuskey said he is not aware of any other transgender athlete in the state who has competed or is trying to compete in girls or women’s sports.
Despite the small numbers of transgender athletes, the issue has taken on outsize importance. The NCAA and the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committees banned transgender women from women's sports after Trump signed an executive order aimed at barring their participation.
The public generally is supportive of the limits. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in October 2025 found that about 6 in 10 U.S. adults “strongly” or “somewhat” favored requiring transgender children and teenagers to only compete on sports teams that match the sex they were assigned at birth, not the gender they identify with, while about 2 in 10 were “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed and about one-quarter did not have an opinion.
About 2.1 million adults, or 0.8%, and 724,000 people age 13 to 17, or 3.3%, identify as transgender in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Those allied with the administration on the issue paint it in broader terms than just sports, pointing to state laws, Trump administration policies and court rulings against transgender people.
"I think there are cultural, political, legal headwinds all supporting this notion that it’s just a lie that a man can be a woman," said John Bursch, a lawyer with the conservative Christian law firm Alliance Defending Freedom that has led the legal campaign against transgender people. “And if we want a society that respects women and girls, then we need to come to terms with that truth. And the sooner that we do that, the better it will be for women everywhere, whether that be in high school sports teams, high school locker rooms and showers, abused women’s shelters, women’s prisons.”
But Heather Jackson offered different terms to describe the effort to keep her daughter off West Virginia's playing fields.
“Hatred. It’s nothing but hatred,” she said. "This community is the community du jour. We have a long history of isolating marginalized parts of the community.”
Pepper-Jackson has seen some of the uglier side of the debate on display, including when a competitor wore a T-shirt at the championship meet that said, “Men Don't Belong in Women's Sports.”
“I wish these people would educate themselves. Just so they would know that I’m just there to have a good time. That’s it. But it just, it hurts sometimes, like, it gets to me sometimes, but I try to brush it off,” she said.
One schoolmate, identified as A.C. in court papers, said Pepper-Jackson has herself used graphic language in sexually bullying her teammates.
Asked whether she said any of what is alleged, Pepper-Jackson said, “I did not. And the school ruled that there was no evidence to prove that it was true.”
The legal fight will turn on whether the Constitution's equal protection clause or the Title IX anti-discrimination law protects transgender people.
The court ruled in 2020 that workplace discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination, but refused to extend the logic of that decision to the case over health care for transgender minors.
The court has been deluged by dueling legal briefs from Republican- and Democratic-led states, members of Congress, athletes, doctors, scientists and scholars.
The outcome also could influence separate legal efforts seeking to bar transgender athletes in states that have continued to allow them to compete.
If Pepper-Jackson is forced to stop competing, she said she will still be able to lift weights and continue playing trumpet in the school concert and jazz bands.
“It will hurt a lot, and I know it will, but that’s what I’ll have to do,” she said.
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Heather Jackson, left, and Becky Pepper-Jackson pose for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Becky Pepper-Jackson poses for a photograph outside of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
The Supreme Court stands is Washington, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
FILE - Protestors hold signs during a rally at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on March 9, 2023. (AP Photo/Chris Jackson, file)
