Governor, GOP lawmakers charge that justices overstepped their authority in deciding groundbreaking case.
By Amanda Eggert MONTANA FREE PRESS
The Montana Supreme Court has upheld a lower court’s ruling in a precedent-setting constitutional climate lawsuit brought by 16 young Montanans.
In the 48-page opinion issued Wednesday, the court ruled that the “clean and healthful environment” enshrined in the Montana Constitution includes the right to a “stable climate system” and that Rikki Held and her 15 co-plaintiffs have demonstrated “a sufficient personal stake” in that right.
Writing for the five-justice majority, Chief Justice Mike McGrath struck down the state of Montana’s argument that climate policy belongs under the purview of policy-setting branches of the government rather than the judicial branch.
Climate advocates hailed the ruling as a “critical victory.” The Montana Department of Justice, which represented the state in the groundbreaking lawsuit, countered that the ruling was “disappointing, but not surprising.”
For his part, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte predicted in a statement that the ruling would lead to “perpetual litigation” and an “open season on Montana’s all-of-the-above approach to energy.”
During their seven-day trial before Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley in June of last year, the plaintiffs argued that the state has threatened their physical and mental health, economic security, cultural traditions and recreational interests by approving energy projects that have contributed to longer, more intense wildfire seasons, shrinking snowpacks, dwindling summertime streamflows and extreme weather events.
The ruling by Lewis and Clark District Court Judge Kathy Seeley is the first legal opinion of its kind, spelling out the environmental harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions as well as the effects of climate change on the physical and mental well-being of young people.
Citing the constitutional framers’ intent to provide for “the strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution,” the Supreme Court shrugged off the state’s argument that Montana’s contribution to climate change is negligible in a global context and that the plaintiffs lacked standing to bring a lawsuit on an issue with such widespread impacts
“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 justices wrote. “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 clean air in the Bull Mountains; and it does exacerbate the wildfire stench in Missoula, along with the rest of the State.”
“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 order continues.
Early exposure to scientific rigor and climate change’s impact on ranches led Rikki Held to lend her name to the nation’s first constitutional climate change lawsuit to reach trial.
Mae Nan Ellingson, a delegate to the 1972 constitutional convention who also served as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, wrote in a text to Montana Free Press that she is “thrilled with the result.”
“The big takeaway from the case is that Montanans must elect legislators who take seriously their and the State’s constitutional obligation to protect Montana’s environment,” wrote Ellingson, who played a key role in drafting the Constitution’s “clean and healthful” provision.
Roger Sullivan, one of the attorneys representing the youth plaintiffs, told MTFP Wednesday that the ruling has effectively removed the state’s “blinders” when analyzing the environmental impacts of fossil fuel projects.
“Our reviewing state agencies need to do their job in compliance with their constitutional duties … which means carefully reviewing the greenhouse gas implications of these fossil fuel project applications so that the agencies are able to make informed decisions that are constitutionally compliant, and so that the interested public can have meaningful participation in those processes,” Sullivan said.
In a phone interview with MTFP, Eva Lighthiser, a Livingston resident who was 14 years old when the lawsuit was filed, described it as “a really powerful ruling.”
“It is incredibly exciting and a validation to see our voices be heard not once, but twice, by the Montana courts,” said Lighthiser, one of the plaintiffs in the case. “Montana continues to set a precedent for climate litigation.”
Montana Environmental Information Center co-director Anne Hedges, who outlined the state’s energy-permitting history as an expert witness for the plaintiffs, described the ruling as a “critical victory for present and future generations.”
“Climate change is wreaking havoc on our economy, environment, and the health of people and their families,” Hedges wrote in an email. “Fossil fuels are fueling a changing climate that has caused Montanans to suffer from rising utility bills and the fourth highest energy costs in the nation. The courageous youth plaintiffs and their legal team proved that justice is on the side of climate action.”
The Montana Department of Environmental Quality, the state agency charged with reviewing water and air impacts of power plants, one of the state’s leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, noted in an email that it has changed its environmental review process for proposed projects in response to the ruling. Those changes have put the agency “in a good position to react to today’s ruling and help the state decide how to move forward,” DEQ spokesperson Rebecca Harbage wrote.
Republican lawmakers and the Montana Department of Justice, led by Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, attacked the justices’ ideological orientations in their statements about the lawsuit’s outcome.
“The majority of the state Supreme Court justices yet again ruled in favor of their ideologically aligned allies and ignored the fact that Montana has no power to impact the climate,” DOJ spokesperson Emilee Cantrell wrote in an email to MTFP.
Top Republican state lawmakers argued that the court had overstepped its authority and promised challenges to the judiciary during the upcoming legislative session.
“The Montana Supreme Court turned the courtroom into a legislative policy committee, drastically overstepping its constitutional boundaries into the Legislature’s role and violating the separation of powers,” wrote incoming Senate President Matt Regier of Kalispell and incoming Speaker of the House Brandon Ler of Savage.
“Judicial reform was already a top priority for Republican lawmakers in our legislative session that starts in less than three weeks. After today, our message to the judiciary is simply this: buckle up.”
Justice Dirk Sandefur wrote a concurring opinion that differed from the majority in its analysis of the court’s ability to mitigate harm to the youth plaintiffs. He wrote that climate change is a “highly complex global program” that “lies exclusively in the domain of federal and international public policy choices and cooperation, rather than in a flashy headline-grabbing rights-based legal case in Montana.”
“However,” Sandefur continued, “plaintiffs had a minimally sufficient standing” to bring the lawsuit and were able to demonstrate that a law the Montana Legislature passed in 2023 expressly prohibiting state agencies from considering climate impacts in project reviews was unconstitutional.
In his dissenting opinion, Justice Jim Rice underscored the importance of climate change and efforts to mitigate it but expressed concern that the majority of the justices had veered toward becoming an “ad hoc legislative body” in violation of the separation of powers.
“Without a doubt, the debate about climate change, and related topics such as possible geoengineering solutions — from the enormous carbon dioxide vacuum facility in Hellisheidi, Iceland, to the massive direct carbon dioxide air-capture facility in Odessa, Texas, to stratospheric aerosol injection technology designed to deflect more and capture less sunlight and thus cool the earth, to enhancement of the capability of the ocean’s phytoplankton habitat to draw and absorb carbon dioxide — are both fascinating and controversial, but courts must nonetheless resist the temptation to depart from their lane, and refrain from entering these matters except upon clear demonstration of a justiciable case or controversy as required by the constitution,” Rice wrote.
When asked to describe the potential implications of the ruling on other climate-oriented litigation, Sullivan, representing the youth plaintiffs, said there would be ripple effects outside of Montana.
Although just a handful of other state constitutions have environmental protections similar to Montana’s, the ruling’s affirmation of climate change’s impact on health, in particular, sets an “important precedent,” he said.
