<\/p>\n
The young Montanans who scored a landmark triumph in the lawsuit Held v Montana<\/a> are calling on the state\u2019s highest court to enforce that victory.<\/p>\n In a groundbreaking legal decision in August 2023<\/a>, a Montana judge ruled in favor of 16 youth plaintiffs who had accused state officials of violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. The state\u2019s supreme court affirmed the judge\u2019s findings in late 2024. But state lawmakers have since violated her ruling, enshrining new laws this year that contradict it, argue 13 of the 16 plaintiffs in a petition filed on Wednesday.<\/p>\n \u201cThese new policies mean the state is going to just continue to act in a way that will increase greenhouse gasses which during the Held case were shown to be disproportionately harming youth,\u201d said Rikki Held, the 24-year-old lead petitioner who was also the named plaintiff in the earlier lawsuit. \u201cIt means we\u2019ll continue down a path we already know and have proven is detrimental.\u201d<\/p>\n The Held decision stated that state laws limiting state agencies\u2019 ability to consider greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts during environmental reviews are unconstitutional. It also said that though the climate crisis is a global issue, Montana bears responsibility to address the harms that are being caused by greenhouse gas emissions within the state.<\/p>\n \u201cThe decision confirmed that laws which put blinders on agencies during environmental reviews are unconstitutional,\u201d said Nate Bellinger, supervising staff attorney at Our Children\u2019s Trust, the non-profit law firm that filed the petition and Held v Montana. \u201cBut now the state is essentially re-blindering agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 2025 Montana legislative session, the new challenge says, elected leaders passed a law prohibiting the state from adopting air quality standards more stringent than those incorporated in the federal Clean Air Act. It\u2019s a \u201ccomplete inversion\u201d where the federal standards will serve as a cap on regulation instead of a floor, Bellinger said.<\/p>\n The legislature also amended the state\u2019s Environmental Policy Act, naming just six climate warming gases for the state to inventory while conducting environmental reviews of energy projects. It also dictated that upstream and downstream emissions \u2013 or those resulting from transporting fossil fuels or out-of-state combustion of the fuels produced in Montana \u2013 should not to be incorporated in the analysis, even though agencies used to consider these impacts.<\/p>\n In an \u201ceven more egregious\u201d provision, said Bellinger, lawmakers explicitly barred state agencies from using the resulting information about pollution to condition or deny permits for those proposals.<\/p>\n \u201cThose provisions are unconstitutional,\u201d Bellinger said.<\/p>\n The petition names the state of Montana, as well as its governor Greg Gianforte and department of environmental quality, as defendants. The agency declined to comment on the challenge. The state of Montana was not immediately available for comment.<\/p>\n Lawmakers behind the new policies made it \u201cpretty clear\u201d that their proposals were a response to the youth challengers\u2019 2023 victory, said Bellinger. Late last year, the incoming state senate president and house speaker even issued a joint statement telling the court to \u201cbuckle up\u201d<\/a> for the following session.<\/p>\n In the new petition, challengers are asking the Montana\u2019s supreme court to strike down these new laws. They say that is a necessary step to ensure the state is upholding duties laid out in its constitution, which guarantees the right to a \u201cclean and healthful environment\u201d.<\/p>\n The challenge comes amid an assault on climate and environmental regulations from the Trump administration. Those attacks make it all the more important for states to protect their citizens, said the youth activist Held.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a time when we really should be seeing more action from our government on greenhouse gas emissions,\u201d said Held.<\/p>\n Montana has moved in the opposite direction, said Bellinger, with the state\u2019s governor creating a taskforce to provide recommendations to \u201cunleash\u201d fossil fuel output, echoing an executive order Trump signed in January<\/a>. State officials are actively<\/a> evaluating<\/a> proposals to expand coal, oil, and gas in compliance with Trump\u2019s pro-fossil fuel agenda, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to get these laws off the books as quick as possible so they can have all the tools they need before them to deny those permits and not feel like they have to approve,\u201d Bellinger said.<\/p>\n Held says she has directly felt the impacts of the climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. On her family\u2019s ranch where she grew up, drought has taken a toll on the health of livestock and crops, while extreme weather limited her ability to spend time outside. Between the filing of Held v Montana in 2020 and plaintiffs\u2019 victory in the case three years later, global warming became worse, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have another five years to wait for protections while the state keeps using fossil fuels,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is really urgent.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Montana #youth #activists #won #landmark #climate #case #push #court #enforcement #Montana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The young Montanans who scored… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2473,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}