Impact Fund uses the Courts to Fight for Environmental Justice.

We fund large-scale civil rights lawsuits that stop polluters, make governments protect clean air and water, and win justice for the communities harmed.

Read on for examples of our work.

Navahine v. Hawai’i Department of Transportation

Hawai’i’s young people live on the front lines of climate disasters like rising seas, wildfires, and dying coral reefs. Roads and sacred ancestral burial grounds have been swept into the sea. Yet the state was doing little to cut emissions from its transportation system, its biggest source of climate pollution.

In 2022, 13 young people, primarily Native Hawaiians, sued the state and the Hawai’i Department of Transportation, arguing it violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.‍ Our Children’s Trust represented them alongside Earthjustice, and we granted Our Children’s Trust $20,000 to help fund this case.

In June 2024, the youth won the first constitutional climate settlement of its kind in the world.

The state agreed to:

• Recognize that young people have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment,

• Reach zero-emission transportation by 2045, and

• Create a Youth Transportation Council to give young people a say in this project.

Read more about Navahine v. Hawai’i Department of Transportation.

Pictured: oil-polluted water in Maui’s Pearl Harbor.

Other Victories for the environment:

In Alianza Nacional de Campesinas v. EPA, our grantees won a settlement forcing the EPA to test 86 pesticides for hormone-disrupting effects, ending decades of inaction that left farmworkers exposed.

In a case over the PolyMet mine, our grantees got Minnesota’s highest court to strike down a permit that would have let the mine pollute nearby waters, protecting Lake Superior watersheds and Native and non-Native communities in northern Minnesota.

In Held v. Montana, our grantees won the nation’s first constitutional climate trial on behalf of 16 young people. The Montana Supreme Court affirmed their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment and ruled that the state violated its constitution by permitting fossil fuel projects without considering their climate impacts.