by Alex Baumhardt, Arkansas Advocate
March 24, 2025

The nation’s highest court declined to hear a petition that would have revived a landmark climate change lawsuit against the federal government, led by young Oregonians and their peers from across the country.

The court’s denial ends 21 youths’ decade-long fight for a trial where they could hold the U.S. government accountable for accelerating global climate change through lawmakers’ policies and fossil fuel subsidies. Despite the setback, it has spurred dozens more cases like it in individual states and around the world.

The nine members of the U.S. Supreme Court denied Monday a petition to throw out a lower court’s decision to dismiss the case Juliana v. United States. The Supreme Court justices dismissed the petition without prejudice, meaning the plaintiffs could attempt to bring it back one day.

Juliana v. United States was first filed in U.S. District Court in Eugene in 2015. Eleven Oregon youths and 10 of their peers from Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, who were between 8 and 18 years old at the time the suit was filed, are listed as plaintiffs.

Among them is Miko Vergun of Beaverton, who said in a news release that she was proud of the impact the case has had on more than 60 similar lawsuits filed against other states and nations.

“For almost ten years, we’ve stood up for the rights of present and future generations, demanding a world where we can not only survive, but thrive,” Vergun said. “We’ve faced extreme resistance by the federal government, yet we’ve never wavered in our resolve.”

Vergun, now 22, has been involved in climate activism since she was in seventh grade, according to Our Children’s Trust. She was born in the Marshall Islands, a Pacific island nation, and attributed her activism to making sure that land stays above sea level.

In the U.S., the Juliana case most recently inspired Held v. State of Montana and Navahine v. Hawaii Department of Transportation, both of which led to 2024 decisions affirming the youth plaintiffs’ state constitutional rights to a clean, healthful and life-sustaining environment.

Since 2015, fossil fuel companies, the U.S. Department of Justice, former President Joe Biden, current President Donald Trump and Republican states attorneys general have filed court documents to dismiss the case and to keep it from going to trial.

Most recently, in May, three Trump-appointed judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco sided with the U.S. Department of Justice in ordering the case be dismissed. In June Julia Olson, attorney for the youth behind the case, filed a request for a rehearing with the Ninth Circuit.

Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, filed a “friend of the court brief” urging the court to grant it. It was signed by 39 other congressional Democrats, including Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, state Rep. Val Hoyle, representing Oregon’s 4th Congressional District and former state Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who represented Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District.

“The Supreme Court’s decision today is not the end of the road and the impact of Juliana cannot be measured by the finality of this case alone,” Olson said in a news release.

Olson said the trust would continue supporting other cases worldwide, and that she would see the U.S. government back in court one day soon. The Supreme Court did not address the merits of the case, and Our Children’s Trust noted in its news release that the court hears less than 2% of the cases it’s brought each year.

“This fight is far from over,” Olson said. “This is a call to all young people who want to stand up to those in the executive office of the president who would silence you and threaten your health and safety — join us in protecting your constitutional rights.”

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

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by Rich Shumate, Columnist, Arkansas Advocate
March 24, 2025

Little Rock witnessed a tale of two events last week that says a lot about the troubled state of American politics.

At the first event, voters incensed by two months of chaos in Washington gathered at the First United Methodist Church on Center Street downtown, filling every pew in the 750-seat sanctuary, as well as the balcony and the choir seats behind the pulpit. Those who couldn’t find a seat stood around the edge of the sanctuary and at the back of the church; more than 100 people were turned away.

The energy, and the anger, at this town hall meeting were palpable, as speaker after speaker talked about the impact President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk and their minions are having on Arkansans from all walks of life — veterans, children with disabilities, Medicaid patients, farmers, immigrants and scientific researchers.

Meanwhile, eight blocks away at the Capital Hotel, U.S. Sens. Tom Cotton and John Boozman, who were both invited to the town hall, were instead rubbing elbows with donors at a high-dollar fundraiser for Cotton’s reelection campaign that featured Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and a smattering of Stephenses and Dillards, with a Rockefeller thrown in.

It cost $1,000 to mingle, $7,000 to dine, and $10,000 to be on the host committee. To thwart would-be protesters, the location of the fundraiser was only disclosed to ticket holders, although details started to leak on social media in the hours before the event.

Given that Cotton, Boozman and Hill’s own in-person town halls have become as rare as a duck-billed platypus, organizers of the Second Congressional District town hall had little expectation that any of them would accept their invitation. (Hill’s scheduler said he was “not available to participate”; Boozman and Cotton didn’t respond.) Organizers left empty chairs for all three just in case.

“You are here because they won’t do their job,” said Chris Jones, the 2022 Democratic candidate for governor, who moderated the event. “It ain’t that hard. There are only a few things you need to do. One of them is to provide a check on the madness that is coming from the executive branch.”

There is, of course, nothing that requires French, Cotton or Boozman to meet in a public setting with their constituents, except perhaps a sense of duty that should go with the elected offices that they hold. Had they attended last week’s event, they would no doubt have gotten a rough reception. People are ticked off.

But that’s part of the job. If you seek public office, you shouldn’t be able to hide away from the public you represent because they make you uncomfortable. And you should represent, and be answerable to, all of your constituents, not just the ones who voted for you or agreeably nod their heads at everything you do.

Alas, Arkansas’ congressional delegation has little political incentive to engage with voters in an uncontrolled public setting. Hill is relatively safe in a racially gerrymandered district; Cotton and Boozman have little to fear in a very red state. They seem to believe they can disregard angry voters with impunity.

Perhaps they’re right about that, although it was notable at the town hall that the crowd gave one of its most vigorous ovations to Marcus Jones, the retired Army officer who ran against Hill last year, after he pushed back against Musk’s targeting of veterans’ programs, which is increasingly becoming an albatross around Republicans’ necks.

“Our veterans swore an oath, and when we did, we wrote a check. And that check could be up to the cost of our own life,” Jones said. “And part of that bargain is the government would take care of us. And the Trump administration is causing our nation to turn its back on that promise.”

In addition to a lack of incentive to endure public scrutiny, Arkansas’ congressmen may have a more pressing reason to avoid voter engagement, rooted in their political timidity in the face of the MAGA takeover of the Republican Party.

For instance, Hill, to his credit, has been an outspoken supporter of Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Imagine, then, if someone at the town hall had asked him whether he supported Trump’s attempt to humiliate Zelenskyy, cut off support for Ukrainian freedom fighters and align U.S. policy with the Kremlin.

He could not answer that question honestly without generating headlines that would anger the MAGA base. So it’s easier just to avoid getting the question.

Likewise, Boozman is a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and has made supporting veterans a key part of his legislative career. But if someone asked him if he supports plans by Musk’s DOGE operation to cut 80,000 positions from the Veterans Administration, which will compromise services to veterans, he’d have to choose between honesty, sycophancy or evasion. Easier, then, to play hide-and-seek.

The list of difficult questions for our congressional representatives goes on and on. Do they support staff cuts at the National Park Service that will affect services at the Buffalo River and Hot Springs National Park? Representing a tornado-prone state, do they support firings at the National Weather Service, which helps keep us safe? Or at FEMA, which helps us recover after disaster hits?

What is their view on kneecapping life-saving research at UAMS, the University of Arkansas and Arkansas Children’s Hospital through cuts to National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation funding? On eliminating the Department of Education that insures educational access for disabled students? Or stripping the Little Rock-based aid group WinRock International (established by Republican Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller) of funding by dismembering USAID?

How do they plan to protect Arkansas farmers from the damage caused by Trump’s tariffs? Or the jobs of folks at Lockheed Martin’s plant in Camden who make missiles being sent to Ukraine?

If our congressmen expressed any doubt about Dear Leader and his unelected billionaire sidekick, there would be hell to pay.  It would also raise another thorny question that they wouldn’t want to answer — if you oppose these actions that are harming Arkansans, then why aren’t you doing more to stop Trump and Musk?

On the other hand, if members of our delegation actually support chaos, mindless budget cuts and indiscriminate firings, shouldn’t they be willing to defend them in public? Where is the courage of their convictions?

The essence of representative government is that the people we elect should represent us, engage with us, and listen to us. When they refuse to do so in service of their own political survival, it has a corrosive effect on democracy, as voters who don’t feel listened to, or represented, grow increasingly frustrated and angry.

Our congressional delegation has shown no sign that they give a hoot about that frustration and anger. We should not expect them to turn up anytime soon to answer questions in an environment where they can’t control the narrative. But that doesn’t mean voters shouldn’t continue to ask their questions more urgently and forcefully — even when they’re only talking to empty chairs.

That’s what democracy looks like, to the degree that we still have democracy left.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

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by Matt Vasilogambros, Stateline, Arkansas Advocate
March 23, 2025

Seeing federal courts slash away at the Voting Rights Act, some states are seeking to resurrect fallen protections for non-white voters with their own versions of the landmark law passed during the height of the Civil Rights Movement.

Democratic lawmakers in Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Maryland and New Jersey are pushing such legislation this session, attempting to join seven other states with similar laws enacted in recent years.

But carrying these bills to law will be a tall task for lawmakers, even in blue states. Michigan’s Voting Rights Act legislation died in the state House after passing the Senate last year. And active bills in Democratic-led states are not guaranteed passage this year because of legal concerns.

New York’s and Washington state’s voting rights acts have survived legal challenges over the past two years.

The federal Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a landmark civil rights law during one of most pivotal times in American history. Black Americans and their allies marched, lobbied and died for the vote, facing state-sponsored violence as they pushed the country to correct historical wrongs, reckon with its Jim Crow reign of terror and guarantee their right to the ballot box.

Since then, the federal Voting Rights Act has been used by courts and the U.S. Department of Justice to protect nonwhite voters from policies and redistricting schemes that made it harder for them to vote or diluted their political power.

But federal courts — including the U.S. Supreme Court — have whittled away those protections in recent decades, claiming the discrimination that led to the law no longer exists. In 2013, the high court cleaved off a major portion of the law’s enforcement mechanism that kept jurisdictions that had historically discriminated against Black people from enacting measures that could once again keep them from the polls.

Some state lawmakers have seen enough.

“You can’t rely on the federal government to do the right thing,” said Democratic state Sen. Charles Sydnor III, who is sponsoring the Maryland Voting Rights Act.

Maryland’s measure, which passed the state Senate this month and will have a House committee hearing next week, seeks to ensure that racial minority communities are fairly represented in county and municipal districts. Sydnor said he was inspired to write the legislation after being disturbed by what he saw as a dilution of Black voting power in the redistricting process for the Baltimore County Council over the years.

“We need to set aside the gamesmanship,” he added in an interview with Stateline. “Everybody should have an opportunity to select folks who represent them.”

The measure would allow the state attorney general or voters to sue localities that organize local voting districts in a way that dilutes political representation from voters of any racial, color or language minority. If a court agrees with the plaintiffs, it could force the locality to redraw district lines or change voting procedures.

This is the fourth time that Sydnor has attempted to pass this legislation, though its substance has changed over the years. Previous versions, which never made it out of committee, had more robust language mirroring other states’ enacted voting rights acts. That included provisions borrowed from Connecticut and New York that would have required local jurisdictions to seek permission, or preclearance, from the state attorney general or the courts before changing election procedures.

The current bill passed the Maryland Senate with no Republican support this month. Leading floor debate, Republican state Sen. Steve Hershey said he found the language of the bill confusing and worried it might hurt rural constituents. He did not respond to a Stateline interview request.

While provisions vary by state, state-level voting rights acts seek to bring back many of the protections that had once been a part of the federal statute.

“When we see right now that the federal government and the federal courts are not doing their jobs to protect us, it’s critical that states step up and take the initiative to enshrine the protections of the Voting Rights Act into their state laws,” said Sylvia Albert, democracy and representation policy counsel at Common Cause, a pro-democracy organization.

Dismantled in the courts

Sixty years after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed it into law, the Voting Rights Act is under attack. Crafted in a time of state-sponsored racist violence, poll taxes and literacy tests, the landmark legislation has been the cornerstone of guaranteeing equal access to the ballot box for racial minority groups.

But for more than a decade, the conservative-led U.S. Supreme Court has handed down decisions that have substantially weakened it.

In 2013, the high court issued a massive blow to the law in Shelby County v. Holder.

The ruling dismantled Section 5 of the law, which prohibited most former Confederate states from enacting new election laws or local ordinances without seeking federal permission first. The restrictions also applied to Alaska, Arizona and more than 50 other local jurisdictions in California, Florida, Michigan, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota with a history of racially discriminatory voting policies.

The measures subject to preclearance ranged from redistricting processes to voter identification laws to changes in the location of a polling place.

“Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. He added that the Voting Rights Act should reflect “current conditions.”

In 2021, in a case over an Arizona law that limited nonprofit activist groups’ ability to collect and turn in absentee ballots on voters’ behalf, the conservative majority set a high bar for voting rights groups to claim election laws were crafted to discriminate against racial minorities.

And next week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a dispute over Louisiana’s congressional map that could further weaken the Voting Rights Act.

While Louisiana’s population is a third Black, the legislature in 2022 drew the state’s congressional map so that only one of its six districts was majority Black. After voters brought a lawsuit, a lower court in 2023 forced the state to redraw the map to create another majority-Black district. However, a group of white residents is now arguing the new map violates their rights.

The outcome of the case, Louisiana v. Callais, could determine the future legality of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which was written to protect voters from racially discriminatory voting laws.

“Voter suppression in Louisiana is like putting a boot on the neck of Black voters,” said Alanah Odoms, executive director at American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana. “Voting rights activists are simply asking for the boot to be removed.”

Section 2 was already under threat by federal courts after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023 upheld a ruling that only the federal government, not affected voters or civil rights groups, could sue under that section of the Voting Rights Act.

That ruling applies to Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota — the states under that court’s jurisdiction. The case was not appealed to the Supreme Court.

A useful tool for states

Earlier this month, Odoms walked with tens of thousands of others across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when state troopers and local law enforcement violently cracked down on civil rights activists peacefully marching for voting rights. The event helped galvanize national support for federal voting rights legislation.

Congressional Democrats have invoked civil rights hero and Selma marcher John Lewis’ name in federal legislation several times in recent years, attempting to restore sections of the Voting Rights Act that have been gutted. Lewis, who represented Atlanta in Congress for 33 years, died in 2020.

But the federal legislation has no chance of becoming law with the current Republican majorities in Congress and with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

The Trump administration also has signaled that it will not enforce voting rights nor pursue other civil rights cases. Seeing the tides turn, some Republican state officials have asked the U.S. Justice Department to drop cases that the Biden administration brought under the Voting Rights Act, including Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

In a February letter, Raffensperger urged U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to drop the federal government’s lawsuit against his state and issue a statement of support for the “common-sense approach” to elections, writing that the Biden administration wrongly argued the policies were racially discriminatory. Biden called the law “Jim Crow in the 21st Century.”

Seeing this, some states have found their own voting rights acts a useful tool to shore up protections for voters of color, said Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a professor at Harvard Law School who has studied this issue.

But, he added, there are limitations to these state laws, not least of which is that they are restricted to states that were, for the most part, not covered by the preclearance requirements under the original federal Voting Rights Act.

“It’s a huge problem that these bills can’t be passed politically in the South,” Stephanopoulos said. “The whole point of the original federal law was to bring minority voters into the political community in the South above all.”

However, even for states that are seen by democracy advocates as having the strongest pro-voter policies, it’s important to pass these measures, said Colorado state Sen. Julie Gonzales, a Democrat who is sponsoring a broad Voting Rights Act in her state. Colorado has the “gold standard” of elections, but more can be done to close the racial disparities of voter participation, she said, noting her Chicana background.

Gonzales’ bill, which is sitting in committee, would prevent municipalities from creating districts that dilute the political representation of racial- and language-minority voters. It also would create clearer pathways for voters to seek resolution to voter suppression in courts and expand language access for ballots.

She added that she has sensed excitement among her Democratic colleagues to get the bill signed into law this year.

“We’re witnessing the erosion of bedrock protections related to the civil rights of voters to be able to cast a ballot free from discrimination,” Gonzales told Stateline. “It’s time for us to act.”

Stateline reporter Matt Vasilogambros can be reached at mvasilogambros@stateline.org.

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.

Arkansas Advocate is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Arkansas Advocate maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sonny Albarado for questions: info@arkansasadvocate.com.

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