The 21 young people who are suing the federal government for failing to take sufficient action to address climate change cleared another legal hurdle on Wednesday when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that their landmark case can move forward. 

In a unanimous ruling, Chief Judge Sidney R. Thomas denied the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss the case under a rarely used procedure called a writ of mandamus, in which a case essentially leapfrogs over the usual legal venues. Judge Thomas wrote that a “writ of mandamus is a drastic and extraordinary remedy reserved for really extraordinary cases” and that the Trump administration’s motion failed to meet that standard. The issues raised by the case “are better addressed through the ordinary course of litigation,” the chief judge wrote, pointing out that the case hasn’t even reached the discovery stage yet. 

“The Ninth Circuit just gave us the green light for trial,” Julia Olson, the chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, the organization spearheading the lawsuit, said in a statement. “We will ask the district court for a trial date in 2018 where we will put the federal government’s dangerous energy system and climate policies on trial for infringing the constitutional rights of young people.”

The 21 plaintiffs in the lawsuit—all of whom were 21 years or younger when the case was originally filed in 2015—contend that the federal government’s failure to take significant action to address global climate change violates their right to due process and equal protection, as guaranteed under the Constitution. The case rests on a principle called the “the public trust doctrine,” which says that the government has a responsibility to safeguard certain public assets—in this case, a stable atmosphere. The Sierra Club is one of many environmental organizations that filed an amicus brief in support of the young people’s claims. 

After today’s appellate court ruling allowing the case to continue, the young plaintiffs are looking forward to seeing the case go to trial.

“The question of the last few years has not been ‘do we have a case’ but rather ‘how far will the federal government go to prevent justice,’” one of the plaintiffs, 21-year-old Kiran Oommen of Seattle, said in the Our Children’s Trust statement. “We have seen that they are willing to go to many lengths to cover up their crimes and maintain the status quo, but not even the Trump administration can go far enough to escape the inevitable tide of social progress. The Ninth Circuit’s decision affirms that we are on the side of justice, and for justice we are moving forward. We’ll see you in court.”