“Holding Our Government Accountable”: Youth Speak Out After Montana Supreme Court Hears Historic Climate Case on Appeal
Youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana say their state government is evading its responsibility to protect their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment.
Last summer a group of young climate activists from across Montana put their state government on trial over policies that blatantly disregard worsening climate impacts and shield fossil fuel projects from scrutiny over their climate pollution – and the youth won.
Following the historic trial in June (which I covered in person) that featured testimony from both the young plaintiffs and scientific, medical and policy experts, Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seeley issued a landmark ruling last August holding the state’s Republican-controlled political branches accountable for violating Montana’s constitution, particularly provisions establishing the right to a clean and healthful environment. This environmental right, she found, includes the climate system. And she ruled that state laws that restrict the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) – the state’s equivalent to the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), considered a bedrock environmental law – including one that requires state agencies to ignore a proposed project’s greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts, violate these constitutional provisions.
“This opinion is really exciting. It’s monumental, it’s historic, it’s transformative,” Julia Olson, founder and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust, which represents youth in constitutional climate lawsuits against governments, said last August in reaction to the ruling. “It’s the first decision that’s really tied tightly to the best available science on how we protect our climate system for young people,” she added.
“When you look at the facts, when you look at the evidence, when you look at the law, when you look at common decency, all of it was on our side” said Kian Tanner, a youth plaintiff from Bigfork, Montana.
Indeed, the state did not even try to contest the climate science during its narrow defense at trial. And in its appeal of Judge Seeley’s ruling in Held et al. v. State of Montana, currently pending before the Montana Supreme Court, state defendants did not try to defend their so-called “MEPA Limitation” laws as constitutional. Instead, they argued that the young people should not have been in court in the first place (in legalese, they lacked standing).
Lawyers representing the state presented their oral arguments to the Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday. Climate change as a global issue is too complex for actions by any one state to have an impact, they argued. Even if the MEPA Limitation laws are unconstitutional, they said, it would not affect state agencies’ permitting decisions and would not reduce greenhouse gas emissions and alleviate youth plaintiffs’ climate-related injuries. They argued that plaintiffs could have challenged specific project permits but did not do so in this case.
Montana-based attorney Roger Sullivan of McGarvey Law, representing the 16 young Montanans, many of whom were in the courtroom on Wednesday, defended the trial court’s decision and explained that the state defendants’ actions are contributing to climate harms. As he told the Montana Supreme Court: “Now before you is an unparalleled trial record with findings of fact based on testimony of the youth plaintiffs and Montana’s renowned climate scientists and medical professionals which established that the reason there is a constitutional injury is because the state legislature told the agencies that they could not look at the impacts on Montana’s climate of the fossil fuel activities they permit, and so the agencies haven’t, which is why the record shows they have never denied a fossil fuel permit. This record also shows we are in a climate emergency and additional greenhouse gas emissions will cause additional heating and additional injuries to plaintiffs.”
The ultimate fate of this landmark case now is in the hands of the state’s Supreme Court, which will decide whether or not to uphold Judge Seeley’s ruling that was based on a robust trial record.
That record includes the testimonies and personal stories of the young people who brought the case, representing a generation that was born into an already unstable climate system and that will disproportionately suffer the consequences of fossil fueled global heating as climate extremes and disasters worsen over time. These young people are experiencing adverse impacts to their health and wellbeing today, and continued government policies and decisions promoting fossil fuels and resulting in more climate pollution will only exacerbate these harms, as the trial evidence showed.
Plaintiff Lander Busse criticized the state government’s response to the youth lawsuit during his trial testimony last year.
“Our case, ruled on by Judge Seeley last year, has laid out the best available science on climate change and related health impacts especially to young people, has shown long-standing state action against the well-being of our state and our future, and has raised the voices of us young Montanans who have already experienced the results of our state government's actions contributing to the global climate crisis,” named plaintiff Rikki Held said in a press statement. “I hope the Montana Supreme Court affirms Judge Seely's August order to ensure our constitutional rights, including the fundamental right to a livable climate, are protected and adhered to as we lay our path for the future.”
Speaking to supporters and media after Wednesday’s Supreme Court hearing, several of the youth plaintiffs expressed their determinations to hold their government accountable to its obligation to protect their fundamental right to a healthy environment.
“We’re not asking the state to end global climate change. We’re asking them to alleviate the harms to me and my fellow plaintiffs, and to protect the right to a clean and healthful environment,” said plaintiff Mica Kantor.
“We’ve seen an incredible lack of responsibility from our state government,” said another plaintiff, Lander Busse. “We know that it is our job to hold the state government accountable for their actions that they perpetuated against us through their climate policies and how they refuse to acknowledge how we’ve been impacted.”
Tanner said this “is a fight about holding our government accountable for their actions.”
Plaintiff Grace Gibson-Snyder, referencing another youth constitutional climate lawsuit against the state government in Hawai’i that was amicably settled last month just days before trial, pointed out that the litigation does not have to be so adversarial. “As we saw in Hawai’i, this does not have to be a fight.” She also addressed the Montana state defendants in her remarks: “You defend this case based on some legal technicalities and you say that [climate change is] too complex to be solved by one state, that we will have no impact if we change our ways. This is an evasion of your responsibility. This is an evasion of your constitutional obligation to protect our rights and our state.”
Brothers Jeff and Nate, the two youngest plaintiffs, spoke to how they are directly affected by air pollution from wildfire smoke. “My lungs are weaker now,” said Nate, the younger of the two. “A few months ago, I had pneumonia and I had to be in the hospital.”
“Growing up in Montana, it was really hard to deal with smoky skies,” said Jeff. “We couldn’t go outside without coughing or getting bloody noses.”
In reflecting on the state’s arguments made at Wednesday’s hearing and on its determination to try to obstruct and fight the youth bringing this case, Tanner told me he feels his government is not taking young people’s climate concerns seriously.
“It was a little disappointing, a little offensive that it doesn’t feel like the state cares about its constituents, especially the youth who have the most to lose. It feels like we’re on the backburner for the state in terms of priorities,” he said. But, he told me, he does feel optimistic about the potential for youth climate activism, including court cases like this one, to spark positive social change.
“I think that these are just the start of a major wave of climate action throughout not just the United States but the world. I believe that this is the start of some incredible work by multiple generations, multiple incredible people who are amazing leaders. This is just the start.”