In the case of Held v. Montana Youth Climate Activists Are Taking Control of Their Future

Source: The Guardian; Robin Loznak/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

State of Montana Constitution:  

ARTICLE IX 

ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES 

Section 1. PROTECTION AND IMPROVEMENT. (1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations. 

This short phrase of the Montana Constitution is the basis of a court decision to guarantee the right to a clean environment. In Held v. Montana, 16 young people, all of whom were 18 or younger at the time of the court filing, have sued the state in what is considered the country’s first youth-led climate-change related case to make it to trial. To summarize the case, which is classified as a constitutional case, the litigants target the language in the state’s constitution, which they argue guarantees them a right to a clean environment provided by the state. The case has highlighted a notable way that youth can involve themselves in the legislative process and secure their future through the levers of democracy, even if they are still too young to vote.  

The case was first filed by a group of 16 youth plaintiffs representing Our Children’s Trust, the Western Environmental Law Center, and McGarvey Law Group. At present, the group has succeeded in getting their case heard at Montana’s highest court, where they presented days of evidence to a judge. The group now awaits a ruling by the judge, who will spend time reviewing hundreds of pages of evidence presented by both sides. 

Montana’s constitution was crafted and adopted in 1889 and was heavily influenced by the state’s rich mining resources and companies. Many of the baseline provisions in the constitution favor these companies and have allowed them to extract resources from the state, securing vast wealth as a result.  

Mining companies and executives enjoyed the lax regulatory environment of the state for the better part of a century. They made sure to take advantage of the 1889 constitution’s provisions that allowed them to dig wherever and whenever they found expensive minerals, with little state oversight and easy-to-obtain permits thanks to the laws written by mining executives decades ago. However, most of that wealth left the state, instead going to the hands large national and multinational companies based far away. Montanans were giving up land, clean air, and clean water and getting nothing in return. 

The language concerning the environment was not added to the Constitution until a 1972 constitutional convention in response to the realization that vast wealth was leaving the state’s boundaries. Residents wanted to be able to enjoy their landscape free from the pollution and intervention of mining companies. In the new constitution, Montanans highlighted their demand for rights of residents to enjoy the land, as well as the inclusion of Article IX, later the basis of the Held v. Montana case.  

Unfortunately, the new language would prove to not have teeth, as shortly after, the Republican-dominated legislature would spend the next several decades curtailing provisions that would safeguard the environment, instead making laws that were overly friendly to polluting energy and oil companies. This is a common occurance in court cases and legislature. A lot of permits and ecological assessments typically go into allowing new drilling operations to open. These assessments ensure that there will not be excess harm to humans and the environment because of new operations. The Montana legislature spent several years eliminating these protections. This legislature also passed laws that allowed companies to ignore climate change as a possible outcome of their business practices, as well as eliminating requirements to adhere to lowering greenhouse gas emissions.  

The state’s highest courts have historically rejected the requirement to see climate change as a real impact of energy production activities. The courts also denied a request to hear a case that would litigate whether the state had a responsibility to address climate change, requiring the litigants to pursue legal action first in the lower courts. Succeeding in this endeavor, the case was accepted in 2020, making it the first constitutional climate trial in US history. 

Daily summaries of the trial, including the vast amounts of evidence presented at the trial that took place from June 12-20th, can be found here.