Animal Law Week panel discussion including Jessica Blome, the lead attorney in a lawsuit that alleges the federal government's policy of ignoring the climate crisis violates Americans' right to be free.
Event Overview
This panel will discuss the case ALDF et al. v. U.S. currently on appeal the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Filed by the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Seeding Sovereignty, and others, the lawsuit alleges that the federal government’s policy of ignoring the climate crisis–and in many cases knowingly exacerbating it–violates Americans’ right to be free because it is destroying our environment relative to the higher, or restorative baseline. The concept of constitutional freedom can be complex but one way to unpack it is by dividing it into positive and negative freedoms–or the right to be free from the nonconsensual impact other people have on you, and the freedom to choose how to live your life.
The plaintiffs allege our government is violating both these freedoms and have named the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and their secretaries as defendants. This case argues that because we have the right to be free from others and to live our lives as we choose, these agencies’ climate policies violate the Constitution, which protects us from such intrusion.
The event is open to all and pre-registration is required.
Jessica Blome primarily practices in the areas of environmental, animal, open government, and land use law at Greenfire Law, PC. She represents clients in citizen suit enforcement, climate change, and strategic impact litigation. Previously Jessica worked as an Assistant Attorney General in the Missouri Attorney General’s Agriculture & Environment Division, Senior Staff Attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and Deputy Director of the San Francisco Ethics Commission.
Santiago Guisasola PhD specializes in mathematically investigating topics with cultural, social, and/or environmental themes. He is currently collaborating to simulate the U.S. livestock industry under policy changes, and to analyze global supply chains and their social and environmental impacts in Brazil. He is a Research Associate at IAMECON, a research firm that works with the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Seeding Sovereignty, Center for Food Safety, HSUS, among other similar organizations.
Cassie King is the communications lead for Having Kids, a nonprofit centered on the first and foremost human right: the right to a fair start in life. She’ll discuss how investing more in each child to reduce childhood inequality is a necessary step on the path to environmental justice, animal liberation, and true democracy. She also is the communications director for the international animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), based in Berkeley, California.