Left: Montana Supreme Court (KGW/YouTube). Right: Fossil fuels factory (KGW/YouTube).
The Montana Supreme Court has ruled that the state has a “fundamental constitutional right” to provide a “clean and healthful” environment — upholding a landmark 2023 climate ruling that said residents were having their rights violated on account of the state not having a “stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.”
The original case stemmed from a federal lawsuit filed in 2020 by 16 young Montanans between the ages of 7 and 23 who sued the state, local officials and a collection of agencies for not protecting them from “climate change” and all that comes with it.
At the trial last year, the youths successfully argued that climate change had drastically altered their lives and that Montana officials were doing nothing to “assess the greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts of all future fossil fuel permits” in the state, according to Melissa Hornbein, attorney for the plaintiffs, who spoke to The Associated Press.
“Montana has already seen (and will increasingly see) adverse impacts to its economy, including to recreation, agriculture, and tourism caused by a variety of factors including decreased snowpack and water levels in summer and fall, extreme spring flooding events, accelerating forest mortality, and increased drought, wildfire, water temperatures, and heat waves,” wrote Chief Justice Mike McGrath in Wednesday’s decision.
The state’s highest court wound up upholding the 2023 ruling in a 6-1 majority vote after rejecting claims from Montana’s legal team, who said the “greenhouse gases” emitted there only caused small issues for people around the globe, and that there is no point in reducing them because it wouldn’t have any true effect on climate change.
“If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?” McGrath said.
The state of Montana appealed the District Court’s 2023 order earlier this year, which established the Montana Constitution’s right to a “clean and healthful environment” and “environmental life support system,” according to the original lawsuit. Justice Jim Rice, the one justice who dissented Wednesday, argued that “plaintiffs’ stories are not legally unique” and “are not distinguishable from the general public at large.”
“The Dissent acknowledges that similarly compelling stories could be drawn from ‘one million other Montanans,”” McGrath said.
Lead plaintiff Rikki Held told the AP on Wednesday that regardless of what others think, the Supreme Court decision was monumental for him and countless others. “This ruling is a victory not just for us, but for every young person whose future is threatened by climate change,” lead plaintiff Rikki Held told the AP.
“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,” McGrath concluded. “The State and its agencies have previously acknowledged such current and future impacts to the Montana environment stemming from climate change, many of which can already be increasingly seen today.”
