For decades now, governments and corporations have been promising to take action on climate change. Over and over again they’ve delivered speeches, filled conference halls, made pledges and set targets, and yet 2024 was another year of record oil and gas extraction in Canada, and record CO2 emissions globally. More recently, their false promises and evasion have given way to outright hostility towards climate targets. Just last week in the U.S., Donald Trump signed an executive order to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and ban new wind projects.
After so many years of government and corporate inaction, climate activists have stopped asking politely, and are beginning to sue their governments instead – an approach that’s getting some exciting results. Last May, Climate Legacy covered two promising climate lawsuits in our newsletter, one in Ontario, and the other roughly 6,000 kilometers away in Switzerland. As new and exciting cases are filed around the world (along with some major updates to the two above-mentioned lawsuits) we wanted to revisit this story for our first newsletter of 2024.
The Ontario case, Mathur v. Ontario, began in 2019 when a group of seven young people, sponsored by Ecojustice, sued the Ontario Government for weakening its climate targets and thereby violating their rights to “life, liberty, and security of the person.” After a long fight that established important legal precedent, the case was ultimately dismissed in 2023, despite the judge agreeing that the Ontario Government’s climate targets fell short of what was needed. When we last left the Mathur case, the plaintiffs were awaiting an appeal with a higher court.
Then, in October 2024, that appeal came through – finding that the previous court made legal errors and a new trial was needed.
“We were all a little bit shell-shocked when it came in,” recalled Alex Neufeldt, one of the Mathur v. Ontario applicants, when we spoke in December. “Even our lawyers took a bit of time to process the news.”
The new decision finds that a government’s climate actions (or lack thereof) are subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the courts can hold them accountable. This is a major step, and aids the legitimacy of not only Mathur v. Ontario, but other current and future climate cases across Canada.
After the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision, a new trial was needed, and that trial could have either been taken on by a lower court in Ontario or moved all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada – our country’s highest court. Ultimately, the Ontario Government chose to send it to the latter, and although the Supreme Court still has to choose if they’ll hear the case (they typically hear only a small number of the cases sent to them) this gives Mathur v. Ontario the potential to influence climate law across the entire country. Neufeldt thinks the case ending up before the Supreme court is a strong possibility.
“Given the broad societal nature of climate change and the fact that our case is the first climate charter case to make it this far–we think they may want to hear it,” she says. “But we don’t know for sure.”
“Like Game 7 of the Stanley Cup”
For Neufeldt and the other Mathur v. Ontario applicants, having their case heard by the Supreme Court of Canada is an exciting opportunity, but one that brings anxiety as well. At that level, the case’s outcome – whether good or bad – will have broad consequences across Canada. The group’s past wins suggest they may receive a positive ruling at the Supreme Court, but that’s far from guaranteed.
“It’s kind of like game seven in the Stanley Cup,” says Neufeldt. “It doesn’t matter if you won three out of six games. If you lose game seven, that’s the big one. We could lose spectacularly and ruin anybody else’s chances of trying. Hopefully that doesn’t happen, but it’s not impossible.”
Despite these risks, Mathur v. Ontario potentially being heard by the Supreme Court of Canada is one of the best chances we have to hold the federal and provincial governments to effective, science-based climate commitments. With federal and Ontario provincial elections expected for 2025, and with climate-denying parties appearing to be strong contenders in both elections, using the courts may be the only way to guarantee we reduce our emissions in the coming years.
After KlimaSeniorinnen’s Victory, Switzerland Digs in its Heels
What inspired our climate litigation coverage last year was the stunning victory that KlimaSeniorinnen (also called the Swiss Senior Women for Climate Protection) achieved in the European Court of Human Rights. After KlimaSeniorinnen spent years trying more conventional actions to convince their country to dial back fossil fuel pollution, seeing a successful climate case in the Netherlands inspired them to work with Greenpeace to sue their government.
“We tried so many things for so many years and we never reached our goal, not a little bit,” recalls Pia Hollenstein, an early KlimaSeniorinnen member. “[the courts] opened a new way for us.”
KlimaSeniorinnen’s first three cases held within Switzerland failed, but losing those cases meant they’d met the prerequisites to bring their case to the European Court of Human Rights, where they won a stunning victory in 2024.
Similar to the Ontario case, the Swiss senior women argued that Switzerland’s climate inaction was violating their human rights, specifically because as older women, they are more vulnerable to the health effects of extreme heat and more likely to die during heat waves. This groundbreaking decision is the first time a transnational human rights court has upheld people’s right to a safe and healthy climate. In its verdict, the court also outlined several requirements Switzerland must meet to comply with its human rights obligations. And, because the European Court of Human Rights is a transnational body, the case sets important precedent that other European countries can follow.
“The judgement is focused on Switzerland, but [the precedent] is written down for all members,” Hollenstein says. “So if an NGO in Poland would like to make a claim now, they already know the position of the Human Rights Court.”
This climate victory, alongside other landmark cases that came both before and after, have the potential to lock governments into climate commitments without the option to easily ignore them. One complication though, is that while in theory governments shouldn’t be able to ignore these binding climate decisions, right now Swiss leaders are trying their hardest to do just that.
First, the government claimed that a small adjustment to their existing climate targets was enough to meet the court’s policy requirements. Then, they went so far as to claim that the ruling was an overreach on the part of the European Court of Human Rights, and that it didn’t reflect the desires of the broader Swiss people.
“Both the National Council and the Upper Chamber, they both said ‘sorry we already do enough, we don’t have to do more’,” recalls Hollenstein. “That really surprised me. Years ago if a decision came from the Human Rights Court, we would take it seriously.”
Despite this tension, KlimaSeniorinnen and their partners at Greenpeace remain undaunted. They are calling for an independent analysis of Switzerland’s carbon budget, which will help them develop a firm CO2 budget for the country. Just this Monday, they sent out a new joint press release doubling down on their request. In the meantime, the Swiss government has ways to stall, but Hollenstein feels that the case has been won, and these delay tactics will only work for so long.
“The Court’s ruling is binding,” Hollenstein says. “Whatever they say in this Parliament, it doesn’t matter. We expect the committee of the European Council will write back saying ‘sorry what you told us is wrong, please try again’. Then six months later the government has to write back explaining what they did, and it will go on until they reach an agreement.”
“The facts are that something has to be done now. And if we exceed the planetary boundaries, it will cost Switzerland much more than if we act now.”
How to Get Involved
Unlike more traditional actions like protests or letter-writing campaigns, climate lawsuits aren’t something that most of us can start or sign up for. These cases require a huge amount of resources and expertise to start, and even if every climate group could start their own case, too many concurrent cases would hurt the cause more than it would help.
So instead of jumping in ourselves, one of the best ways to help these cases is to donate to the sponsoring organizations, such as Ecojustice for Mathur v. Ontario, or Greenpeace for the KlimaSeniorinnen case.
There are also several other cases currently being heard or in the planning stages both here in Canada and around the world. We’ve listed a few exciting ones below, but please feel free to widen your search if you’re interested in finding a case to support:
- The youth-led climate lawsuit La Rose v. His Majesty the King is proceeding towards an eight-week trial set for Oct. 26, 2026 in Vancouver.
- Also in BC, Sue Big Oil is signing up supporters to jointly launch a class action lawsuit against the world’s largest oil companies.
- Similarly, states and municipalities across the U.S. are suing oil companies for deceiving the public about climate change and their role in driving it. You can find a map of these cases at this link.
If you have a specific case you’d like to support (or have any questions about climate litigation at all!) feel free to reach out to ask us about this work. We would be more than happy to help.
Take care,
Eric Murphy
Communications Coordinator, Climate Legacy
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