I recently attended the year-end wrap-up webinar from Our Children’s Trust (OCT), and there’s a lot going on! For those who don’t know, OCT is a nonprofit public interest law firm in Eugene, Oregon, dedicated to securing a healthy atmosphere and safe climate for young people. 

Their federal, state, and international lawsuits push governmental bodies to recognize environmental harms, especially as they affect the health and lives of young people. Every case, win or lose, strengthens the next, empowering the young people who have stepped up to be plaintiffs and building a body of testimony from those plaintiffs and expert witnesses, including public health professionals and  climate scientists. An overarching goal of OCT cases is to clarify the government’s constitutional obligation to protect the environment, thereby ensuring the right to life—yes, right to life (and to liberty and the pursuit of happiness)--of our earth’s young people. 

A drive from South Shore to Lakeview reveals a stark truth about Chicago: factories and polluting industries cluster on the South Side, while northern neighborhoods remain largely untouched. This disparity is no coincidence—it stems from decades of racially charged policies that shield white, affluent areas from the burdens of air pollution, waste accumulation, and toxic runoff. 

I like to sleep with my windows open, which unfortunately means that if there’s a storm at night, I wake up to puddles by my bedside. The breeze and fresh air feel worth the occasional water damage, but this summer, the storms in Chicago reached an intensity that made me reconsider my preference for a ventilated sleep environment. 

Since its inception in 1907, the forbidding Blackhawk Generating Station was the polar opposite of a friendly next-door neighbor to Beloit College’s quaint, leafy campus, located across Pleasant Street in Beloit, Wisconsin. Whenever winds blew from the west, the coal-fired, steam-generating electric power station’s 135-foot-high smokestack would belch plumes of polluted air toward the college green. This continued for years, as the brick, concrete, and steel plant expanded in stages until 1947, and finally ended in 2010 when its owner, Alliant Energy, ceased operations, slating the plant for demolition.

On May 29, 2025, the lawyers at Our Children’s Trust (OCT) filed Lighthiser v. Trump, on behalf of 22 youth from Montana, Oregon, Hawai‘i, California, and Florida, asserting their constitutional rights to life, health, and safety. This youth-led constitutional rights lawsuit challenges three of the Trump administration’s recent Executive Orders, each of which has the capacity to intensify the climate crisis and worsen the youth plaintiffs’ climate-related health injuries.