SALT LAKE CITY — Seven Utah children and young adults have filed suit against the state of Utah, alleging officials have systematically encouraged and supported fossil fuels development that has worsened air quality and contributed to climate change.

“Utah’s fossil fuel development policy poses an existential threat to Utah’s children, sacrificing their health, safety, and lives for the short-term profits of the fossil fuel industry,” Andrew Welle, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a prepared statement. Welle is with Our Children’s Trust, a Eugene, Oregon, nonprofit law firm that specializes in climate suits.

The suit, filed in 3rd District Court this week, said that because of the development and combustion of fossil fuels, Utah has the worst average air quality in the country and is experiencing “profoundly dangerous” climate changes such as hotter temperature, deadly heat waves, drought and wildfires.

“Utah’s government continues to throw fuel on the fire, maximizing, promoting, and systematically authorizing fossil fuel development in the state as a matter of official state policy,” the suit said, arguing the state is harming the health and safety of youth and reducing their lifespans.

The suit contends that the state is violating the youths’ substantive due process right to life and liberty.

The youths range from the ages of 9 to 18 — six from Salt Lake County and one from Park City. The suit does not include the plaintiffs’ surnames but it does list the names of their guardians.

Defendants include Gov. Spencer Cox, the Department of Natural Resources, the Office of Energy Development, the Division of Oil, Gas and Mining, and directors and board members who lead the involved state agencies.

Jennifer Napier-Pearce, a senior adviser and communications director for Cox, said Thursday the governor and other officials would have no comment on the case because it is ongoing litigation. The state has not yet responded to the suit in court.

The suit said young people, their bodies still developing, are uniquely vulnerable to and disproportionately harmed by air pollution and climate change and they are politically and economically powerless to bring about policy changes.

The suit said that, for decades, state officials have acknowledged in official reports the environmental damage being done. “Knowing of the dangers, defendants have actively caused and continue to cause and worsen the air quality and climate crises in Utah,” the suit said.

In 2006, according to the suit, Utah officials cemented in state law a policy to promote the development of natural gas, coal, oil, oil shale and oil sands and has followed through with it ever since.

The suit seeks a hearing on the youths’ claims and a declaration from the court declaring the state law unconstitutional.

The suit also includes personal stories of the youth plaintiffs. One, Sedona, 17, of Park City, suffers from asthma and has to be treated with a nebulizer several times a day “to help prevent life-threatening asthma attacks in Utah’s dangerous air quality,” the suit said.

Growing up in Salt Lake City, Sedona often had to stay inside to avoid the worst of the hazardous pollution, according to the suit, which added that the family had to move to a higher elevation, based on her doctor’s recommendation, to reduce her exposure.

Increasingly common wildfires also have affected her, including when the family had to be evacuated when a fire threatened their neighborhood in 2021, the suit said.

A bill was introduced in the 2022 legislative session aiming to generate more information about the impact of air pollution on Utahns. House Bill 109, sponsored by Rep. Steve Handy, R-Layton, would allow health care professionals to indicate on a person’s death certificate that air pollution factored into the death.

But the bill was quickly sent to the House Rules Committee, the usual repository for bills disfavored by leadership, and it never got a committee hearing.

“If we do this as a policy, then we can get a few years of data going forward to assist in formulating additional policies to reduce air pollution,” Handy said in a 2021 interview.

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