FIGHT FOR THE PLANET | TIM DICKINSON Rolling Stone

Montana district court judge Kathy Seeley pulled no punches in her 103-page ruling. She declared that the prohibition on weighing climate impacts is “facially unconstitutional” because it “violates the Plaintiffs’ right to a clean and healthful environment.” The state’s climate-blind decisions, she insisted, have been “contributing to the depletion and degradation of Montana’s environment and natural resources.” 

Here’s the Plan to Take Montana’s Massive Climate Win Nationwide

A Montana court ruled that youth have a right to a livable climate. Now, lawsuits around the country are working to build on that success

AUGUST 17, 2023

Youth plaintiffs in the climate change lawsuit Held v. Montana arrive at the Lewis and Clark County Courthouse in Helena, Montana, on June 20, for the final day of the trial. A Montana judge on Aug. 14 sided with young environmental activists, who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil-fuel development without considering its effect on the climate. THOM BRIDGE/INDEPENDENT RECORD/AP

ARE BOOMER POLITICIANS obligated to act on climate change so gen alpha can inherit a livable planet? A state judge in Montana declared that doing so is a constitutional imperative Monday — validating a cutting-edge litigation strategy that could bring court-ordered climate action to states from Hawaii to Virginia, and possibly the entire nation. 

The lawsuit in Montana, spearheaded by 16 young plaintiffs demanding that their future be rescued from uncontrolled warming, offers a powerful-proof-of-concept that climate litigation can force the hand of a political establishment that’s beholden to coal and oil interests. The decision is already boosting momentum for similar cases going forward across the country.

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“It’s the first time that a trial court has said that the right to a stable climate is a fundamental constitutional right here in the United States,” says Julia Olson, chief legal counsel of Our Children’s Trust — the public-interest law firm that led the litigation. Most important, she insisted, the decision found that “government policies that promote fossil fuels, and ignore climate change, violate those fundamental constitutional rights.”

The litigants in Held v. State of Montana ranged from 2- to 18-years-old when the suit was filed in March 2020. These young people claimed both “physical and psychological” harms from climate change — ranging from asthma exacerbated by wildfire smoke; to anxiety about whether it’s safe to bring new children onto our wildly warming world; to loss of enjoyment of the state’s legendary alpine glaciers. A trio of indigenous plaintiffs decried weather extremes that increasingly disrupt their ability to “participate in cultural practices and access traditional food sources.”

The lawsuit leaned on a powerful provision of the Montana state constitution. Revised in the early 1970s — after decades of unchecked industrial pollution by mining and smelting giants had befouled towns like Butte and Anaconda — the document guarantees that Montana “shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment… for present and future generations.” Montana’s environmental guarantee is one of the strongest such commitments in the country, matched only by Pennsylvania and New York. . . 

Aiming to build on the Montana win, Our Children’s Future already has legal actions in the pipeline in four other states: Florida, Hawaii, Virginia, and Utah. Its landmark federal case Juliana v. United States, first filed in 2015, also has new momentum — as it now has a clear path to a trial. . . "

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