The suit, based on the common law theory of nuisance, claims monetary damages from the energy industry for the destruction of Kivalina, Alaska by flooding caused by climate change.

[6] Sea ice historically protected the village, whose economy is based in part on salmon fishing plus subsistence hunting of whale, seal, walrus, and caribou.

But the ice is forming later and melting sooner because of higher temperatures, and that has left it unprotected from fall and winter storm waves and surges that pummel coastal communities.

"It's battered by winter storms and if residents don't get some money to move, the village will cease to exist.

[7] Due to the dramatic loss of land, Kivalina residents chose a relocation site, an area known as Kiniktuuraq, about two miles southeast of the current location.

[9] Shortly after it came down, Judge Sandra Brown Armstrong in the Northern District of California dismissed the nuisance claims, stating that the plaintiffs did pose non-justiciable under the political question doctrine and that the plaintiffs "otherwise lacked standing under Article III of the United States Constitution."

[10] Defendants of current climate change cases such as Comer v. Murphy Oil USA and Connecticut v. American Electric Power are using this ruling as a way to support their defense of a lack of claim for the plaintiff and therefore there is no standing per Article III of the Constitution.