Lawsuits aim to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for climate change. Here's a look at some

A German court ruled against a Peruvian farmer Wednesday in a landmark case that claimed global warming fueled by energy company RWE 's historical greenhouse gas emissions put his home at risk.

Farmer and mountain guide Saúl Luciano Lliuya said glaciers above his hometown of Huaraz are melting, increasing the risk of catastrophic flooding.

RWE, which has never operated in Peru, denied legal responsibility, arguing that climate change is a global issue caused by many contributors.

Experts said the case had the potential to set a significant precedent in the fight to hold major polluters accountable for climate change.

Here's a look at other climate cases being watched closely:

An environmental group has asked the Dutch Supreme Court to uphold a landmark lower court ruling that ordered energy company Shell to cut carbon emissions by net 45% by 2030 compared to 2019 levels.

That ruling was overturned in November by an appeals court — a defeat for the Dutch arm of Friends of the Earth and other environmental groups, which had hailed the original 2021 ruling as a victory for the climate.

Climate activists have scored several courtroom victories, including in 2015, when a court in The Hague ordered the government to cut emissions by at least 25% by the end of 2020 from benchmark 1990 levels. The Dutch Supreme Court upheld that ruling five years ago.

The United Nations' top court held two weeks of hearings in December into what countries worldwide are legally required to do to combat climate change and help vulnerable nations fight its impacts.

The case was spurred by a group of island nations that fear they could simply disappear under rising sea waters, prompting the U.N. General Assembly asked the International Court of Justice for an opinion on “the obligations of States in respect of climate change.”

Any decision in the case, the largest in the court's history, would be non-binding advice and could not directly force wealthy nations to act, though it could serve as the basis for other legal actions, including domestic lawsuits.

In another advisory opinion requested by small island nations, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea last year said carbon emissions qualify as marine pollution and countries must take steps to mitigate and adapt to their adverse effects.

Colombia and Chile are awaiting an advisory opinion from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on whether countries are responsible for climate change harms and, if so, what their obligations are to respond on human rights grounds.

A four-day hearing was held this month in the Brazilian state of Amazonas and an opinion is expected by the end of the year.

Much of the testimony focused on indigenous rights in Latin America, including whether industries violate their rights to life and to defend their land from environmental harm.

Dozens of U.S. states and local governments have filed lawsuits alleging that fossil fuel companies misled the public about how their products could contribute to climate change, claiming billions of dollars in damage from more frequent and intense storms, flooding, rising seas and extreme heat.

In March the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from Republican attorneys general in 19 states aimed at blocking climate change suits against the oil and gas industry from Democratic-led states.

And state supreme courts in Massachusetts, Hawaii and Colorado have rejected attempts by oil companies to dismiss lawsuits, allowing them to proceed in lower courts.

Even so, the Department of Justice recently sued Hawaii and Michigan to prevent the states from seeking damages from fossil fuel companies in state court for harms caused by climate change. The DOJ also sued New York and Vermont, challenging their climate superfund laws that would force fossil fuel companies to pay into state-based funds based on previous greenhouse gas emissions.

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Lawyer Roda Verheyen speaks to journalists before the verdict is announced in the hearing of a climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian mountain farmer that glaciers above his hometown of Huaraz are melting due to German energy company RWE greenhouse gas emissions, at Hamm Higher Regional Court, in Hamm, Germany, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (Bernd Thissen/dpa via AP)

A protestor demands climate justice in front of the Higher Regional Court in Hamm, Germany, ahead of the verdict in the climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Luciano Lliuya against German energy company RWE, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

A protestor demands climate justice in front of the Higher Regional Court in Hamm, Germany, ahead of the verdict in the climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Luciano Lliuya against German energy company RWE, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

A protestor demands climate justice in front of the Higher Regional Court in Hamm, Germany, ahead of the verdict in the climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Luciano Lliuya against German energy company RWE, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

A protestor demands climate justice in front of the Higher Regional Court in Hamm, Germany, ahead of the verdict in the climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer Luciano Lliuya against German energy company RWE, Wednesday, May 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

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)