State v. Montana First Judicial District Court

The Montana Supreme Court denied the State of Montana’s petition for a writ of supervisory control dismissing youth plaintiffs’ request for injunctive relief in their climate change lawsuit alleging that the State Energy Policy and the “Climate Change Exception” to the Montana Environmental Policy Act violate the Montana Constitution. The State had contended in a motion filed in the district court on May 6, 2022 that the district court’s failure to dismiss the request for injunctive relief in its August 2021 order on the State’s motion to dismiss was inadvertent. The State filed its petition in the Supreme Court on June 10. Noting that supervisory control is an “extraordinary remedy,” the Supreme Court found that the State had attempted to “manufacture urgency or emergency factors” to justify the relief by waiting nine months to resolve claimed “confusion” regarding the order on the motion to dismiss and “then claiming a crisis exists” when the district court did not immediately rule on its motions.