To general surprise, the young people who sued the state of Montana over climate change have won their case. It’s a big moment, because although youth-led climate actions have been filed in every US state, it was the first case of its kind in the US to be allowed to go to court.
I’m sure there will be a lot more commentary on this over the next few days, but Vox updated their preview of the court case with a brief summary of the ruling:
The decision reads, in part: “Montana’s (greenhouse gas emissions) and climate change have proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury to the Youth Plaintiffs.”
Climate assessment
And one of the effects of this is to bring climate change impacts back into consideration when assessing energy projects:
Prior to the ruling, the state government was not permitted to consider the impact of climate change when approving energy projects, but now that process will likely change. The judge also ruled that a change to MEPA (Montana Environmental Policy Act) earlier this year made by the state legislature is unconstitutional.
All of which seems a good moment to add a link to a compilation of “blasted kids/ meddling kids” quotes from Scooby-doo, doubtless playing on repeat right now in the Montana State capital.
‘Clean and healthful environment’
Going back to the original Vox article, the grounds for the case are the Montana constitution, which says:
“The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”
The 16 young plaintiffs argued that the state’s continuing support of the fossil fuel industry violated their right to a clean and healthful environment.
Montana has the biggest coal reserves in the United States, and is a major coal exporter. But a significant part of its economy is driven by outdoor recreation and tourism.
‘A show trial’
It may also be relevant that both the Houses in the Montana Congress are currently controlled by a “super-majority” of Republicans, meaning that they can over-ride the Governor’s veto. And that they pushed through the change in Montana law mentioned above the month before the court case was due to be heard. Judges tend not to like that kind of thing.
The State Attorney-General was aggressively dismissive of the case when it was brought, describing it as a publicity stunt that exploited well-intentioned kids:
Following the legislative session, there are no existing laws or policies for the district court to rule on. A show trial on laws that do not exist, as the district court seems intent on holding, would be a colossal waste of taxpayer resources.
The Vox article is mostly a transcript of a podcast interview with Amanda Eggert, who is the environment reporter for the Montana Free Press. Pulling out a couple of clips from the interview, Eggert was, back in June, a little surprised that Judge Kathy Seeley, who made the ruling, had allowed the case to proceed.
Having ‘standing’
Other cases had been proposed in other states, and dismissed. But there are maybe some lessons here for climate campaigners, apart from persistence.
The first is just making sure that the plaintiffs have “standing”:
(S)tanding is a legal concept, essentially establishing that the plaintiffs have demonstrable harms and that there are remedial actions that can be taken to correct those harms. And she also recognized that the state’s energy policies do have a direct bearing on those harms.
The second was the level of care that went into establishing the record of those harms:
I’ve spoken with one of the lead attorneys for the plaintiffs, and I know that they took great care to establish a whole record. Their initial complaint is over 100 pages, which is huge by legal standards.
‘Individual harms’
And, related, the third is that the plaintiffs established that they had experienced individual harms, and that those harms related to climate change:
So there are plaintiffs that talk about being evacuated due to forest fires or plaintiffs who talk about grieving the loss of glaciers in Glacier National Park. There are plaintiffs who talk about concerns related to wildlife. And in addition to establishing those very specific harms, the plaintiffs also went to great lengths to demonstrate that climate change is happening, that climate change is happening in Montana, and that the state has been extremely permissive in its permitting of fossil fuel extraction.
And it may not have helped the state’s case that apart from challenging the standing of the plaintiffs they also argued that climate change wasn’t man-made.
There was also a piece in Inside Climate News in June that profiled some of the young plaintiffs. The ranch on which the lead plaintiff, Rikki Held, lives, has been directly affected by fires and floods:
wildfires and floods increasingly threaten the family’s 7,000 acres, which lie 20 miles outside Broadus, population 450. In many ways, Rikki is what everyone imagines a Montanan to be. She started riding horses and moving cattle when she was four. But she’s also a recent college graduate, trying to understand her place in the world.
Legal history
Of course, Held now has her name on a piece of legal history. The Climate News piece also mentions the lawyers acting for the young plaintiffs, a specialist non-profit firm called Our Children’s Trust:
OCT works to identify effective legal strategies and to represent young people who want to participate as plaintiffs. They partner with local youth organizations, give presentations in schools and assemble legal teams… OCT conducts a rigorous onboarding process to ensure young people know what it means to be a plaintiff, understand the commitment involved and are not feeling pressured to be involved, (OCT’s) Bellinger says.
The attorneys then identify the applicants whose lives best support the lawsuit and work with them to draft a legal complaint in which the plaintiffs describe their lives and the ways climate change has and will harm them… OCT supplies scientific and legal reasoning.
Pretty clear
Reading between the lines of the Vox piece, it seems possible that Judge Seeley allowed the case to proceed because she thought that legislation that seemed to be designed to amend the Montana Constitution (or undermine it) should at least be tested in court.
The full 100-page judgment is here. Skimming through it this evening, the judge is pretty clear that climate change is caused by humans, that the State of Montana has contributed to that through its actions, and that young people in general, and the plaintiffs specifically, have been affected by adverse climate change effects.
It is a landmark moment, but this is only the beginning of the legal process. The case will likely now work its way up to the Montana Supreme Court.
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A version of this article is also published on my Just Two Things Newsletter.
