The Wisconsin youth climate lawsuit, formally Dunn v. Public Service Commission of Wisconsin, was filed in August 2025 by fifteen young Wisconsinites, ages eight to seventeen, who argue that state laws forcing the Public Service Commission to ignore air pollution and capping renewable energy requirements violate their rights under the Wisconsin Constitution. A Dane County Circuit Court judge dismissed the case in April 2026, and the plaintiffs appealed in late May. It is now pending before the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District IV.
The Laws Being Challenged
The suit targets specific statutes that constrain what the Public Service Commission (PSC) can do when it reviews energy proposals.
Under Wis. Stat. § 196.491(3)(d)3, the PSC is prohibited from finding that a proposed fossil fuel facility is not in the public interest based on its air pollution impact, provided the facility meets the air quality requirements of Chapter 285. In practice, the PSC cannot deny a permit for a gas or coal plant because of its greenhouse gas emissions or its contribution to climate change.
The plaintiffs also challenge Wis. Stat. § 196.378, Wisconsin’s renewable portfolio standard. The standard required utilities to reach a renewable percentage roughly six points above their early-2000s baseline by 2015, a target that was met in 2013 and has not been updated since. The complaint describes it as functioning as a ceiling rather than a floor: the PSC cannot require utilities to go further, even though every major investor-owned utility in the state has voluntarily pledged carbon-free electricity by 2050. A third provision, Wis. Stat. § 196.025(1)(c)1, is cited as reinforcing those limits on PSC authority.
The Constitutional Theory
The lawsuit rests on two provisions of the Wisconsin Constitution. Article I, Section 1 guarantees the inherent rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which the plaintiffs read to encompass rights to health, safety, bodily integrity, and a stable climate system. Article IX, Section 1 establishes Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine, under which the state holds navigable waters in trust for the public and must protect them from substantial impairment. The plaintiffs argue that fossil-fuel-driven climate change is degrading Wisconsin’s lakes, rivers, and wetlands in violation of that duty.
Wisconsin’s constitution does not contain an explicit right to a clean and healthy environment. Montana and Hawaii do, and youth plaintiffs have won climate cases in both states on the strength of that language. The Wisconsin plaintiffs are making a harder argument: that existing guarantees of life, liberty, and public trust resources implicitly require the state to act on climate.
Who the Plaintiffs Are
The fifteen plaintiffs are identified in filings by first names only. The lead plaintiff, Kaarina Dunn, is a teenager from La Crosse County whose family was forced to relocate after a boulder was dislodged by climate-driven freeze-thaw cycles. Other plaintiffs include Indigenous youth from the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians who describe the decline of cold-water fisheries like walleye, and children from farming families reporting damage from extreme rain and drought cycles.
The plaintiffs are represented by Our Children’s Trust, a national nonprofit that has filed youth climate cases across the country, and by Midwest Environmental Advocates, a Wisconsin-based nonprofit law center. The lead attorney, Nate Bellinger of Our Children’s Trust, previously led the successful Held v. Montana case. Tony Wilkin Gibart and Skylar Harris of Midwest Environmental Advocates serve as co-counsel.
Why the Case Was Dismissed
The defendants are the Wisconsin Public Service Commission and the Wisconsin State Legislature. Both moved to dismiss on four grounds: that the case presented a nonjusticiable political question, that the plaintiffs lacked standing, that the defendants had sovereign immunity, and that the complaint failed to state a claim.
On April 23, 2026, Dane County Circuit Court Judge Julie Genovese granted the motions in a 35-page order. Applying the political question framework from the U.S. Supreme Court’s Baker v. Carr, she ruled that the Wisconsin Constitution vests energy policy in the legislature and that the court lacked a “judicially manageable standard” to address the plaintiffs’ air pollution and renewable energy goals. Granting the relief sought, she wrote, “would show a blatant lack of respect for our elected officials and the agency defendants.”
Where the Appeal Stands
The plaintiffs filed a notice of appeal to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District IV on May 28, 2026, and were preparing their appellate briefs as of mid-2026. The case remains open.
Bellinger framed the appeal as a question about judicial authority: “Courts exist to protect people from unconstitutional government conduct — especially children, and especially when the harm is real and ongoing. The political question doctrine does not shield unconstitutional laws from judicial review, and it does not apply here.” Wilkin Gibart said the challenged laws “are contributing to climate change and causing real, concrete harm to our clients” in violation of the state constitution.
How It Compares to Other Youth Climate Cases
Dunn is part of a wave of youth-led climate litigation. In 2023, a Montana court ruled in Held v. Montana that the state’s constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment required officials to consider greenhouse gas emissions when permitting fossil fuel projects. Hawaii settled the Navahine case in 2024, agreeing to zero out transportation-sector carbon emissions by 2045. At the federal level, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Juliana v. United States in March 2025.
The Wisconsin case is considered more legally difficult than Montana or Hawaii because the state constitution has no explicit environmental rights provision. A win on appeal would mean that traditional guarantees of life, liberty, and public trust resources can independently require state action on climate, a theory with implications well beyond Wisconsin.