The Montana Supreme Court on Wednesday affirmed a lower court’s ruling that a state law violated the youth plaintiffs’ right to a clean and healthful environment under the state constitution.
The court found that a limitation in the Montana Environmental Policy Act violated the right to a clean and healthful environment by “preclud[ing] an analysis of [greenhouse gas] emissions in environmental assessments and environmental impact statements.”
The court also ruled against the state’s argument that the plaintiffs lacked standing in the case. Chief Justice Mike McGrath, writing for the majority, stated: “Plaintiffs definitively showed at trial, without dispute, that climate change is causing serious and irreversible harms to the environment in Montana—assuring them and future Montanans a ‘harmful’ rather than ‘healthful’ environment as guaranteed by the Constitution.”
The court’s ruling upheld the lower court’s decision to permanently enjoin the limitation, allowing state agencies and officials to consider the effects of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte disagreed with the result, stating that the decision will result in “perpetual lawsuits that will waste taxpayer dollars and drive up energy bills for hardworking Montanans.” Montana Department of Justice (DOJ) Spokesperson Emilee Cantrell also expressed disappointment with the decision and claimed that the justices ruled on ideological lines. She further said that the ruling “ignored the fact that Montana has no power to impact the climate.”
Climate change activists, on the other hand, celebrated the decision. Columbia University Climate Change Law Professor Michael Gerrard stated
I think this kind of victory will embolden youth plaintiffs and others to bring similar cases in other parts of the country, and here the trial court, now referred by the state Supreme Court, upheld all the findings of the climate scientists. It’s going to be increasingly hard for anyone to challenge those scientific findings.
The 16 youth plaintiffs sued Montana, the state governor, and multiple state agencies in March 2020. The plaintiffs, who ranged in age from two to 18 at the time, claimed the defendants knowingly contributed to climate change by approving fossil fuel projects while disregarding environmental impacts. The plaintiffs said the defendants’ policies “exacerbated the harms they were feeling from climate change” and asked the court to declare that the right to a clean and healthful environment involves a “stable climate system.”
In August 2023, the First Judicial District Court found that the right to a clean and healthful environment “includes climate as part of the environmental life-support system,” that the plaintiffs had legal standing, and that two Montana statutes were unconstitutional. One of those statutes was the MEPA Limitation, which provided that certain environmental reviews may not include reviews of actual or potential impacts beyond the state’s borders. The defendants appealed, claiming that the plaintiffs lacked standing and that the court’s ruling on the MEPA Limitation went beyond the judiciary’s purview.
The case was the first in the nation to challenge state climate policies and reach a trial.
In 1999, the Montana Supreme Court held that the right to a clean and healthful environment is a fundamental right under the state constitution. Multiple other states have also enshrined environmental protections into their state constitutions, including Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and New York.