Held v. State

In a lawsuit filed by youth plaintiffs in March 2020, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed a trial court’s 2023 decision holding that the Montana Constitution protects the right to a stable climate system and that a provision of the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) restricting consideration of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and corresponding climate change impacts in environmental reviews violated that right. First, the Supreme Court held that a stable climate system is “clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers inclusion of the right to a clean and healthful environment” in the Montana Constitution. The court rejected the State’s arguments that because the framers did not specifically discuss climate change or other global issues, they could not have intended for the right to include environmental degradation resulting from climate change. The court cited precedent describing the Montana Constitution’s right to a clean and healthful environment as “forward-looking and preventative” and concluded that the right should apply to pollutants not in existence or fully understood at the time of the 1972 Montana Constitutional Convention. The Supreme Court also noted that the plaintiffs had shown that climate change has impacted environmental resources identified by the framers and that the trial court had made “extensive, undisputed findings of fact that GHG emissions are drastically altering and degrading Montana’s climate, rivers, lakes, groundwater, atmospheric waters, forests, glaciers, fish, wildlife, air quality, and ecosystem.” Second, the Montana Supreme Court rejected arguments that the youth plaintiffs did not have standing to challenge the MEPA provision’s constitutionality. The court found that the plaintiffs showed “a sufficient personal stake in their inalienable right to a clean and healthful environment” with their definitive showing at trial of climate change’s “serious and irreversible harms” to Montana’s environment and their allegation that the statute infringed on that right by prohibiting consideration of projects’ GHG emissions. Regarding the causation and redressability prongs of standing, the court concluded that while the statute might be “only a small contributor to climate change generally, and declaring it unconstitutional will do little to reverse climate change,” the harm to the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights would be alleviated by declaring the statute unconstitutional and enjoining the State from acting in accordance with it. Third, the Montana Supreme Court found that the MEPA prohibition on considering GHG emissions had to be analyzed under strict scrutiny because it “clearly implicates” the right to a clean and healthful environment. The court ruled that even if the State defendants had a compelling interest in balancing private property rights with that right, the State did not show that the statute was narrowly tailored to this interest. The Supreme Court also found that State failed to show that the trial court abused its discretion in finding no good cause to grant the State’s motion requesting psychological evaluations of eight of the plaintiffs. The court said it was not necessary to resolve the issue of whether the plaintiffs put mental health “in controversy” because, among other factors, the question of standing was resolved based on injury to the plaintiffs’ constitutional right “rather than to any mental, emotional, physical, aesthetic, or property interests harmed by the State’s actions.” A dissenting justice would have ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing because they alleged “an abstract injury that is indistinguishable from that to the public as a whole and is not legally concrete to them personally” and, furthermore, had not shown that the MEPA restrictions caused the constitutional harm.

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On November 21, 2023, the Montana District Court denied State defendants’ motion for clarification and for stay of judgment pending the defendants’ appeal of the court’s August 2023 determination that a Montana Environmental Policy Act provision limiting considering of climate change violated youth plaintiffs’ right under the Montana Constitution to a clean and healthful environment. The court first concluded that it did not have jurisdiction to consider the motion for clarification because the Montana Supreme Court has accepted the case for interlocutory appeal. Regarding the motion for stay, the district court found that the defendants failed to establish a likelihood that they would succeed on the merits of their appeal. The district court rejected any contention that the relief granted in the August 2023 order was beyond the scope of the court’s power, noting that it had not ordered the defendants “to prepare and implement a remedial climate recovery plan,” but rather had enjoined the defendants from following unconstitutional statutes. The district court also found that the defendants did not establish that considering greenhouse gas emissions and climate change impacts in environmental reviews would cause any irreparable harm, finding no evidence to support the defendants’ allegations that such consideration would “undermine Montana’s energy system, increase costs to consumers, compromise grid reliability, or cause any other irreparable harms to Defendants.” The court also rejected the defendants’ allegations that they would bear increased litigation and administrative burdens. The court found, moreover, that the youth plaintiffs would experience infringement of their constitutional rights in the absence of a stay, and that “[d]epletion or degradation of the environment and natural resources also constitutes irreparable harm.” The court also found that the public interest lay “in protecting Montana’s clean and healthful environment and in protecting the constitutional rights of all Montanans, especially the youth.”

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