SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Supreme Court has rejected a lawsuit filed by a group of teens against the state, arguing its fossil fuel policies contribute to climate change and harm their lives.

In a unanimous ruling, the Court upheld a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss the lawsuit. However, the justices reversed the lower court and ordered the lawsuit to be dismissed “without prejudice,” allowing the teens to bring a new legal challenge.

Seven teens represented by Our Children’s Trust sued Governor Spencer Cox and Utah’s Division of Oil, Gas & Mining. They basically argued that the state’s energy policies — with a heavy reliance on fossil fuels — contributes heavily to climate change and that harms their health, in violation of the Utah Constitution’s “right to life” provision. They were asking the Utah Supreme Court to revive their lawsuit and the justices heard arguments last year.

The Utah Supreme Court’s ruling largely focused on technical matters, and noted a change in the law by the Utah State Legislature over energy policy focusing on “developing energy resources and planning an energy future ‘with a focus on human well-being and quality of life.'”

“The challenged provisions do not—as the youth plaintiffs claim—limit the government defendants’ discretion in making decisions about fossil fuel development. Thus, even accepting as true the allegation that less fossil fuel development will ameliorate the adverse health effects of climate change, we can only speculate that striking these specific provisions would lead to less fossil fuel development in this state,” Justice Diana Hagen wrote in the opinion. “The youth plaintiffs try to address this deficiency by asking the court to instruct the government defendants on how they must act ‘going forward,’ but such instruction would amount to an impermissible advisory opinion.”

But Justice Hagen and the rest of the Court did leave a door open for the teens to bring a new legal claim. They ordered the lawsuit to be dismissed “without prejudice.”

“In the proceedings below, the youth plaintiffs did not seek leave to amend their complaint. So once the district court determined that it lacked subject-matter jurisdiction, it should have dismissed the complaint without prejudice, providing the youth plaintiffs an opportunity to cure the jurisdictional deficiencies in a repleaded complaint,” she wrote.

Lawyers for the teen plaintiffs did not immediately have a comment on the ruling.

Read the Utah Supreme Court’s ruling here: