Young people took on fossil fuels and won. What’s next?

Montana lawmakers violated young people’s rights – and the state constitution – by ignoring fossil fuels’ impact on the climate, a judge ruled Monday.

In her decision supporting 16 young plaintiffs in Held v. Montana ­– the first constitutional climate case to be tried in the United States ­– District Judge Kathy Seeley wrote that fossil fuel extraction and use within the state was clearly tied to global climate change. She also found that young people have a particular standing to demand changes, since they will be disproportionately and negatively impacted by a rapidly heating planet. The decision has broad implications for environmental action across the country and, potentially, the world.

“It’s one of the strongest decisions on climate change ever issued,” says Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University’s law school, which keeps a database of the more than 2,000 climate lawsuits that have been filed globally.

While the legal arguments in the Montana case, which did not seek financial compensation or damages, are specific to the state, he says, the judge’s findings on climate science itself were broadly noteworthy and decisive. And it could help influence an explosion of climate lawsuits making their way through court systems across the U.S. 

For much of the June trial, internationally renowned scientists gave testimony explaining the connections between fossil fuel use and climatic disruptions such as increased wildfires, heat extremes, and drought.

It was one of the first times that both climate science and climate change denialism were put under the microscope of American legal questioning, Mr. Gerrard said earlier this summer. And the judge’s decision reflects what many court-watchers noted during the trial: Climate science, already highly vetted and agreed upon by experts worldwide, is convincing – as are the impacts of a heating world on young people.

While the plaintiffs used their allotted five days of trial to deeply question scientists and youths, the state rested its case after a day. It called only three witnesses, canceling at the last minute the appearance of a climatologist who had publicly spread doubt about climate change. 

“This case is a clear win for climate science,” said Delta Merner, lead scientist at the Science Hub for Climate Litigation at the Union of Concerned Scientists, in a statement. “Throughout the trial, climate science, the role fossil fuel emissions play in climate change, and the harm being caused to Montana’s youth were irrefutable.”

Julia Olson, chief legal counsel and executive director with Our Children’s Trust, the law firm that represents the Montana plaintiffs and other young people in climate cases making their way through other state legal systems, also called the ruling a “sweeping win.”

“Today, for the first time in U.S. history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people,” she said in a statement.

But Emily Flower, spokesperson for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, decried the ruling as “absurd.” She said the office planned to appeal, saying the judge had allowed plaintiffs to put on a “taxpayer-funded publicity stunt.”

During the trial, the state argued that Montana was not the cause of global climate disruption and that it therefore could not be held responsible for the alleged harm young people experienced. Defense attorneys declined to cross-examine young people, ages 5 to 22, who described grief, loss, and fear as their ranch lands burned and their fishing rivers lost water, as smoke inhalation became part of their sports seasons, and as rising temperatures and melting glaciers threatened a landscape they loved.

Earlier in the year, the office called the young plaintiffs “well-intentioned children” exploited by “an out-of-state organization.”

For Grace Gibson-Snyder, a 19-year-old plaintiff, this line has always been particularly galling. She is a sixth-generation Montanan whose great-great-great-grandmother came to the state in a covered wagon, following the gold rush. 

She understands why Montanans are particularly attuned to outsiders disrupting their way of life – whether it’s the Californians moving into her home city of Missoula who are perceived to be running up property values, or vacationers buying up large homes and then trying to control ranching methods. 

But this is home for her and her fellow plaintiffs, she says. They are clear-sighted, and fearful, about what is happening to their beloved state. 

“I don’t think climate change should be a political issue,” she said during an interview earlier this month in Missoula, part of an upcoming global Monitor series on young people and climate. “But it keeps getting politicized. We’re still accused of bringing in out-of-state, liberal ideas and attorneys. And that’s actually a misrepresentation, both literally and also in terms of our goals.” 

Ms. Gibson-Snyder is uncomfortable with the label of climate “activist.” It feels too disruptive, she says, when really she believes in government, democracy, and law. And it also doesn’t feel right for her state, she says, where care for the outdoors is widely bipartisan.  

The lawsuit, she says, was simply asking elected leaders to do what they are supposed to do.

And that, in many ways, is itself specific to Montana. The state is one of a handful, including Hawaii and Massachusetts, that has environmental protection written into its constitution. It reads, “The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations,” and it requires the legislature to protect the “environmental life system” from depletion and degradation. 

That constitutional requirement, reflective of the state’s long reverence for the outdoors, was the base of Judge Seeley’s decision. 

“My overwhelming emotion is relief,” Ms. Gibson-Snyder wrote in an email after the verdict. “There is still hope. Hope for me and the other youths’ futures, hope for Montana and the places we love. Hope for the rest of the world to follow suit. 

“Thank you to the courts for upholding our constitutional rights,” she continued. “Thank you to all of the people who have expressed their concerns about the future, brought diverse perspectives to ensure all people are cared for, and spent time fighting for our state.”