Montana Youths Win Landmark Climate Case

On Aug. 14, in District Court, 16 young Montanans won a monumental court case against the State over climate change. According to NPR, the case was over a part of the Montana Constitution that guarantees residents “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” and how the plaintiffs argued this was being violated by increasing fossil fuel development in the state.

This trial is the first of its kind and sets a remarkable precedent for other climate cases in the US. NPR interviewed a Montana attorney named Barbara Chillcott where she said, “Nationally, I think a case like this is what sets the stage for the dominoes to fall.”

According to the official case website, “Montana’s Climate Change Lawsuit”and NPR, the case started back in 2020 when 16 young Montana residents between the ages of 5 and 22 filed a lawsuit against the state arguing for a clean and healthful environment. The case bears the name of one of the plaintiffs, Rikki Held. 

Held also has her story on the official website. According to the site, she grew up on a 7,000 acre cattle ranch and was an eyewitness to how climate change partially destroyed the land her parents owned. In 2015, she helped the USGS who were researching the Powder River, which ran through her property. She helped them cross the river and helped them analyze sediment from the river bank.

Rikki continued to love science in high school where she got interested in environmental science and climate change. This spring, Held completed her degree in environmental science at Colorado College. 

The original complaint states the Powder River dried up during the summer of 2007. This came after several years of drought in southeastern Montana and because there was no water in the river, there was nothing for the crops and the livestock on their ranch.

The river would also  sometimes flood and they would lose cows that way. Nearby summer wildfires are also spewing ash and smoke all over the ranch. And keep in mind that this is all happening while summer temperatures are reaching the upper 90's.

Recently on Sept. 29, the State of Montana appealed the lawsuit to the Montana Supreme Court where another case will be held sometime in the foreseeable future. The most likely reason they appealed is the Republican controlled legislature will not want to start regulating one of it’s biggest businesses. Montana is one of the largest producers of coal, oil, and gas in the country and regulating that would mean possibly spending billions of dollars to shrink the industry which means less money for the state.

If the court rules in favor of Held, Montana will be expected to have more climate regulations on fossil fuels. This could possibly cause the state's budget to increase and maybe raise taxes. However, the youth plaintiffs in the case see this as an acceptable cost to help the environment.

Changes as a result of the court victory will most likely not cause immediate change for Montanans. It will take a while for the effects to be noticeable and it will also require other states to take similar actions to prevent climate change.