Whether a constitutional right to a healthy, livable climate is protected by state law is at the centre of a lawsuit going to trial in Montana, where 16 young plaintiffs and their attorneys hope to set an important legal precedent.
It’s the first trial of its kind in the US, and legal scholars around the world are following its potential addition to the small number of rulings that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.
The trial comes shortly after the state’s Republican-dominated Legislature passed measures favouring the fossil fuel industry by stifling local government efforts to encourage renewable energy, and increased the cost of court challenges to oil, gas and coal projects.
By enlisting plaintiffs ranging in age from 5 to 22, the environmental firm bringing the lawsuit is trying to highlight how young people are harmed by climate change now and will be further affected in the future.
19 year old Grace Gibson-Snyder said she’s felt the impacts of the heating planet acutely as wildfires regularly shroud her hometown of Missoula in dangerous smoke and as water levels drop in area rivers.
“We’ve seen repeatedly over the last few years what the Montana state Legislature is choosing,” Gibson-Snyder said. “They are choosing fossil fuel development. They are choosing corporations over the needs of their citizens.”
The other young plaintiffs include members of Native American tribes, a ranching family dependent on reliable water supplies and people with health conditions, such as asthma, that put them at increased risk during wildfires.
Experts for the state are expected to downplay the impacts of climate change and what one of them described as Montana’s “miniscule” contributions to global greenhouse gas emissions.
One reason the case may have made it so far in Montana, when dozens of similar cases elsewhere have been rejected, is the state’s unusually protective 1972 Constitution, which requires officials to maintain a “clean and healthful environment.” Only a few other states, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and New York, have similar environmental protections in their constitutions.
The case could result in what’s called a “declaratory judgment” saying officials violated the state Constitution. But environmental law expert Jim Huffman said such a ruling would have no direct impact on industry.
“A declaratory judgment would be a symbolic victory, but would not require any particular action by the state government. So the state could, and likely would, proceed as before,” he said.
The case was brought in 2020 by attorneys for the environmental group Our Children’s Trust, which has filed climate lawsuits in every state on behalf of young plaintiffs since 2011. Most of those cases, including a previous one in Montana, were dismissed prior to trial.
Founder Julia Olson said securing trials in Montana and Oregon marked a “huge step” forward for the group.
“It will change the future of the planet if courts will start declaring the conduct of government unconstitutional,” she said.
While Montana’s Constitution requires the state to “maintain and improve” a clean environment, the state’s Environmental Policy Act, originally passed in 1971 and amended several times since, requires state agencies to balance the environment with resource development.