As the organization’s co-executive director and chief legal counsel, Olson works with children and their guardians to bring pro-bono cases that have pioneered a new framework for protecting the climate and the rights of young people.
In 2015, the nonprofit launched the first youth climate lawsuit against the federal government. In Juliana v. United States, Olson argued that the federal government’s promotion of fossil fuel use violated the young plaintiffs’ right to a livable environment. After winding its way through the courts, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case in March 2025, but Olson is still proud of its impact. The case inspired similar lawsuits around the world, including in Colombia and South Korea. “The early wins in that case really helped launch the youth climate movement, and it inspired youth across the world,” she says. “It helped transform the issue of climate change into a children's rights issue, which is the heart of our work.”
In August 2023, Olson and her team secured a landmark win, representing 16 young people ages 5 to 22 in Held v. State of Montana, the first youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit in U.S. history to go to trial and win. The case secured protections guaranteed by the state’s constitution, which enshrines a right to a “clean and healthful environment,” and overturned a law that prohibited regulators from considering greenhouse gas emissions or climate impacts of fossil fuel projects when issuing permits. In December 2024, the state Supreme Court upheld the decision—but Our Children’s Trust is now fighting again to ensure the state complies with the ruling.
As the Trump Administration rolls back climate protections, Olson paradoxically sees the challenges as an opening to strengthen environmental regulations, calling it “an opportunity to move the law in the right direction and break that whole system and pattern of behavior.”
Under Olson’s leadership, Our Children’s Trust has advocated for environmental action on behalf of youth plaintiffs in every U.S. state. It also has cases on the docket in state, federal, and global courts, including filing a challenge in December to stop the construction of a gas power plant in Pennsylvania; a lawsuit to prevent an LNG project in Alaska; suing to block the EPA’s repeal in February of its 2009 ruling that underpins federal actions to regulate greenhouse gasses; and, in Canada, supporting 15 youth plaintiffs who claim the country’s government is violating their rights by contributing to climate change.
And some of the Juliana plaintiffs, over 10 years older than when they joined the suit, have carried forward their case to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, an international body focused on defending human rights in the Americas, to determine whether the U.S. violated their rights by not hearing the case in the Supreme Court.
Investing in young people will ensure a more prosperous world for all, says Olson. “If we can center children—their health and safety, and their opportunities in the future—in the way we govern ourselves, then every community will be healthier.”
English (US) · 