Alena Hochstadt, et al. v. State of Hessen

Ten youth claimants filed a complaint against the State of Hessen in September 2021, arguing that the lack of a contemporary climate legislature and specific greenhouse gas reduction paths violated their fundamental rights and future freedoms. They contended that the state failed to implement measures to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and did not specify permissible emission quantities. On 18 January 2022, the Federal Constitutional Court dismissed the case, ruling that there was no violation of the claimants' rights under the Basic Law, noting that federal law's sectoral control approach made vertical coordination between the federal government and states less critical.

• Ten youth claimants alleged that the State of Hessen violated their fundamental rights and health by failing to adopt climate legislation that accurately reflects carbon neutrality targets, specifically the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2045.
• The claimants argued that the absence of standardized reduction paths for greenhouse gases and the lack of expressly permissible emission quantities for regulated and subsequent periods would impose a disproportionate CO2 reduction burden on future generations, thereby restricting their future freedom.
• The Federal Constitutional Court dismissed the case on 18 January 2022, concluding that the claimants' rights under Article 2.2 sentence 1 and Article 14.1 of the Basic Law were not violated.
• The court reasoned that because the federal Climate Protection Act utilizes a sectoral control approach, vertical coordination between the federal government and individual states may be superfluous or secondary to horizontal coordination across emission sectors.

APA

Contributor, C. (2023). Alena Hochstadt, et al. v. State of Hessen. ClimaTalk. https://climatalk.org/2023/10/25/alena-hochstadt-et-al-v-state-of-hessen/

Chicago

Contributor, ClimaTalk. Alena Hochstadt, et al. v. State of Hessen. ClimaTalk, 2023. https://climatalk.org/2023/10/25/alena-hochstadt-et-al-v-state-of-hessen/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Contributor |first1=ClimaTalk |title=Alena Hochstadt, et al. v. State of Hessen |publisher=ClimaTalk |date=25 October 2023 |url=https://climatalk.org/2023/10/25/alena-hochstadt-et-al-v-state-of-hessen/ |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{contributor2023alena, author = {Contributor, ClimaTalk}, title = {{Alena Hochstadt, et al. v. State of Hessen}}, institution = {ClimaTalk}, year = {2023}, month = oct, url = {https://climatalk.org/2023/10/25/alena-hochstadt-et-al-v-state-of-hessen/}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }