Plaintiffs Mica, 14; Badge 15, Lander 18, and Taleah, 19, listen to arguments during a status hearing on 12 May 2023, in Helena, Montana, for a case that they and other Montana youth filed against the state arguing Montana officials are not meeting their constitutional obligations to protect residents from climate change. The first-of-its-kind trial began Monday, 12 June 2023, before District Court Judge Kathy Seeley in Helena. Photo: Thom Bridge /Independent Record / AP
Plaintiffs Mica, 14; Badge 15, Lander 18, and Taleah, 19, listen to arguments during a status hearing on 12 May 2023, in Helena, Montana, for a case that they and other Montana youth filed against the state arguing Montana officials are not meeting their constitutional obligations to protect residents from climate change. The first-of-its-kind trial began Monday, 12 June 2023, before District Court Judge Kathy Seeley in Helena. Photo: Thom Bridge /Independent Record / AP

By Matthew Brown and Amy Beth Hanson
10 June 2023

HELENA, Montana (AP News) – Whether a constitutional right to a healthy, livable climate is protected by state law is at the center of a lawsuit going to trial Monday 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 U.S., 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 favoring the fossil fuel industry by stifling local government efforts to encourage renewable energy while increasing the cost to challenge oil, gas, and coal projects in court.

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. Their testimony will detail how wildfire smoke, heat and drought have harmed residents’ physical and mental health.

A tree goes up in flames as a wildfire burns on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, 11 August 2021, near Lame Deer, Mont. The Richard Spring fire threatened hundreds of homes as it burned across the reservation. Photo: Matthew Brown / AP Photo
A tree goes up in flames as a wildfire burns on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, 11 August 2021, near Lame Deer, Mont. The Richard Spring fire threatened hundreds of homes as it burned across the reservation. Photo: Matthew Brown / AP Photo

The plaintiffs’ youth has little direct bearing on the legal issues, and experts say the case likely won’t lead to immediate policy changes in fossil fuel-friendly Montana.

But over two weeks of testimony, attorneys for the plaintiffs plan to call out state officials for pursuing oil, gas, and coal development in hopes of sending a powerful message to other states.

Plaintiff Grace Gibson-Snyder, 19, 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.” […]

A house sits in Rock Creek after floodwaters washed away a road and a bridge in Red Lodge, Montana, 15 June 2022. Photo: David Goldman / AP Photo
A house sits in Rock Creek after floodwaters washed away a road and a bridge in Red Lodge, Montana, 15 June 2022. Photo: David Goldman / AP Photo

Lawyers for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, a Republican, tried repeatedly to get the case thrown out over procedural issues. In a June 6 ruling, the state Supreme Court rejected the latest attempt to dismiss it, saying justices were not inclined to intervene just days before the start of a trial that has been “literally years in the making.”

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. […]

To Gibson-Snyder, now a student at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, the court system became the only avenue to make change as a 16-year-old.

Since then, “I’ve become maybe a bit disillusioned,” she said. “The question is not only can we create sustainable policy, it’s how can we dismantle the policy that’s actively harming Montana?” [more]

Youth environmentalists bring Montana climate case to trial after 12 years, seeking to set precedent