Some teenagers successfully lobby for access to the family car on a Friday night. Others successfully sue governments about not doing enough about greenhouse gas emissions.

Aided by the Conservation Law Foundation and the Mass Energy Consumers Alliance, four teens won a case before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Tuesday that will force the state to follow through on its greenhouse gas emissions goals. The state’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act pledged to reduce emissions to 25 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, but the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) never created any emissions regulations to make that happen.

The lawsuit argued that the 2008 legislation required the DEP to actually do something, while the state said it interpreted the law to mean it would merely need to define numbers that would be consistent with the goal. The Supreme Judicial Court overturned a lower court’s decision, telling the DEP that it is not free to interpret the law that way.

This case joins others brought elsewhere by young people with the assistance of a group called Our Children’s Trust. The list includes a case that compelled the state of Washington to fulfill its public trust doctrine obligations by creating emissions regulations.