Montana Supreme Court affirms decision in Held, historic youth climate case
The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a district court ruling in the nation’s first constitutional climate change trial , affirming that the youth plaintiffs have a “fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment” while revoking two Montana statutes.
The 70-page decision, authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, comes 16 months after Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled in the landmark Held v. Montana lawsuit, explicitly stating that the state’s greenhouse gas emissions are “proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment, and harm and injury to the youth plaintiffs.” Seeley’s decision also rolled back two laws enacted by the 2023 legislature that changed the Montana Environmental Policy Act.
The state immediately appealed the decision to the Montana Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in the appeal in July. The court found in a 6-to-1 decision that Montana’s constitutional guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment” includes a stable climate system, “which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right.”
“Plaintiffs showed at trial—without dispute—that climate change is harming Montana’s environmental life support system now and with increasing severity for the foreseeable future,” the order states. “Plaintiffs showed that climate change does impact the clear, unpolluted air of the Bob Marshall wilderness; it does impact the availability of clear water and clear air in the Bull Mountains; and it does exacerbate the wildfire stench in Missoula, along with the rest of the State.”
The six-justice majority found the law which limited analysis of greenhouse gas emissions during environmental reviews violates the Montana Constitution’s “right to a clean and healthful environment,” and enjoined the state from acting on it.
Justice Jim Rice dissented.
The lawsuit, the first of its kind to reach trial, was filed by 16 youth plaintiffs from across Montana who alleged the state violated their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by promoting the fossil fuel industry and exacerbating the effects of climate change.
“This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change. We have been heard, and today the Montana Supreme Court has affirmed that our rights to a safe and healthy climate cannot be ignored,” lead plaintiff Rikki Held said in a statement.
Our Children’s Trust and the Western Environmental Law Center, which represented the youth plaintiffs in the case, said in a news release they hoped the ruling would be fully implemented, and if that does not happen, they would be prepared to take further legal action to ensure the state is complying.
“This ruling clarifies that the Constitution sets a clear directive for Montana to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, which are among the highest in the nation on a per capita basis, and to transition to a clean, renewable energy future,” Western Environmental Law Center attorney Melissa Hornbein said in a statement.
Montana’s Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte said in a statement the state is reviewing the decision but that he believes it will lead to “perpetual lawsuits” that will “waste taxpayer dollars and drive up energy bills” for Montanans. He also accused the court, which interprets whether laws made by the Legislature are constitutional when they are challenged, of making policy outside of its purview.
“This Court continues to step outside of its lane to tread on the right of the Legislature, the elected representatives of the people, to make policy,” Gianforte said. “This decision does nothing more than declare open season on Montana’s all-of-the-above-approach to energy, which is key to providing affordable and reliable energy to homes, schools, and businesses across our state.”
Right to a clean and healthful environment
Following Judge Seeley’s 2023 ruling, the defendants — including the state departments of Environmental Quality, Natural Resources and Conservation and Transportation — appealed to the Montana Supreme Court.
The state asked the appellate justices to review four issues: Whether the Montana Constitution’s guarantee of a clean and healthful environment includes a “stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties;” whether the youth plaintiffs had standing to bring the initial lawsuit; whether the MEPA limitation is unconstitutional; and whether the district court abused its discretion by denying a state request for psychiatric examination of the plaintiffs.
Delegates to the 1972 constitutional convention were overwhelmingly in favor of increasing environmental protections for Montana. The language in Article IX of the Montana Constitution — “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” — came about “hours and hours of debate, rethinking, restructuring, political maneuvering and numerous votes,” recalled constitutional delegate Mae Nan Ellingson.
The majority’s opinion drew heavily on transcripts of the debates from the constitutional convention in their opinion.
The state argued that because the framers used Montana-specific examples of a clean environment — such as the clear, unpolluted air near the Bob Marshall Wilderness — instead of specifically discussing climate change or other global issues when adopting the environmental rights, they “could not have intended to include an environment undegraded from the effects of climate change,” according to court documents.
The court disagreed, citing Seeley’s findings of fact that greenhouse gas emissions have specific effects within the state, “drastically altering and degrading Montana’s climate, rivers, lakes, groundwater, atmospheric waters, forests, glaciers, fish, wildlife, air quality, and ecosystem.”
“We reject the argument that the delegates—intending the strongest, all-encompassing environmental protections in the nation, both anticipatory and preventative, for present and future generations—would grant the State a free pass to pollute the Montana environment just because the rest of the world insisted on doing so,” the opinion states. “The District Court’s conclusion of law is affirmed: Montana’s right to a clean and healthful environment and environmental life support system includes a stable climate system, which is clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right to a clean and healthful environment.”
In the matter of standing, which addresses whether the youth had the legal right to bring the case, the state argued the youth stories of harm from climate change impacts were not “legally unique” nor “distinguishable from the general public at large,” and thereby do not meet the threshold for bringing the constitutional lawsuit.
However, the court disagreed, citing a previous ruling made by the Montana Supreme Court that plaintiffs alleging constitutional harm do not have to distinguish their harm from that of the general public.
“Holding that there is no sufficient injury for any Montanan to bring a claim asserting their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment just because every Montanan is harmed by climate change” would be a misapplication of standing, according to the court’s majority.
The court also considered the argument that to have standing, plaintiffs must show that legal relief will alleviate their injuries. Lawyers for the state argued that because climate change is a global problem, whereas Montana’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emission is comparatively negligible, “no single judicial action in Montana can meaningfully reduce climate change, and thus redress Plaintiffs’ injuries.”
However, the court rejected that notion, stating it could potentially “immunize the state from litigation” for similar constitutional claims, and citing a Massachusetts case that acknowledged “a reduction in domestic emissions would slow the pace of global emissions increases, no matter what happens elsewhere.”
The court opinion also summarized the myriad stories told by the 16 youth plaintiffs during the two-week district court trial last summer, indicating that their collective “athletic, recreational and economic injuries,” give them sufficient personal standing in the case.
“I was really pleased to see that the Montana Supreme Court grounded its analysis of harm in the testimony of the youth plaintiffs,” Roger Sullivan, an attorney with McGarvey Law in Kalispell who represented the plaintiffs, told the Daily Montanan. “It specifically mentioned the impacts on the working ranches in Montana, on the diminishment of the recreational opportunities the youth plaintiffs can experience, of the harm that comes from breathing in the smoke that annually descends on our valley. I was pleased to see they got both the harm these youth plaintiffs are experiencing, the cause of it as a result of fossil fuels being collected and combusted, and that Montana is one of the actors in this global phenomenon.”
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December 12, 2023
