Young Montanans who achieved a landmark triumph in Held v. Montana are calling on the state's highest court to enforce this victory.
IN groundbreaking legal solution in August 2023A Montana judge has ruled in favor of 16 young plaintiffs who accused government officials of violating their constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. The state Supreme Court affirmed the judge's findings in late 2024. But state lawmakers have since violated her decision, enshrining new laws this year that contradict it, 13 of the 16 plaintiffs argued in a petition filed Wednesday.
“This new policy means the state will continue to act in ways that increase greenhouse gas emissions, which were shown in the Held case to disproportionately harm young people,” said Ricky Held, the 24-year-old lead petitioner who was also named as a plaintiff in the previous lawsuit. “This means we will continue down the path that we already know and have proven to be harmful.”
Held's decision said state laws limiting the ability of government agencies to consider greenhouse gas emissions and climate impacts during environmental reviews are unconstitutional. It also says that while the climate crisis is a global issue, Montana has a responsibility to address the harm caused by greenhouse gas emissions within the state.
“The decision confirmed that laws that turn a blind eye to agencies during environmental reviews are unconstitutional,” said Nate Bellinger, senior attorney at Our Children's Trust, the nonprofit law firm that filed the petition and Heald v. Montana. “But now the state is essentially re-blinding the agencies.”
The new challenge states that during Montana's 2025 legislative session, elected leaders passed legislation that would prohibit the state from adopting more stringent air quality standards than those included in the federal Clean Air Act. It's a “complete inversion” in which federal standards would serve as a regulatory limit rather than a floor, Bellinger said.
The Legislature also amended the state's Environmental Policy Act to name just six climate-warming gases that the state would be required to inventory when conducting environmental reviews of energy projects. He also required that upstream and downstream emissions — or those that result from transporting fossil fuels or burning fuels produced in Montana outside the state — should not be included in the analysis, even though agencies have previously taken those impacts into account.
In an “even more egregious” move, Bellinger said, legislators expressly prohibited government agencies from using the pollution information they receive to condition or deny permits for these proposals.
“These provisions are unconstitutional,” Bellinger said.
The petition names the state of Montana, as well as its Governor Greg Gianforte and the Department of Environmental Quality as defendants. The agency declined to comment on the situation. Montana State was not immediately available for comment.
Legislators behind the new policy have made it “abundantly clear” that their proposals are a response to young challengers winning in 2023, Bellinger said. Late last year, the new state Senate president and House speaker even issued a joint statement. tell the court to “buckle up” for the next session.
In a new petition, the challengers are asking the Montana Supreme Court to strike down these new laws. They say it is a necessary step to ensure the state fulfills the responsibilities set out in its constitution, which guarantees the right to a “clean and healthy environment.”
The issue comes amid attacks on climate and environmental regulations by the Trump administration. These attacks make the need for states to protect their citizens even more important, youth activist Held said.
“The time has come where we really need to see more action from our government on greenhouse gas emissions,” Held said.
Montana has moved in the opposite direction, Bellinger said, with the state's governor creating a task force to make recommendations for “unleashing” fossil fuel production, echoing Trump's executive order. signed in January. Government officials actively assessing proposals to expand coal, oil and gas production in line with Trump's pro-fossil fuel agenda, he said.
“We need to get these laws off the books as quickly as possible so they have all the tools they need to deny these permits and not feel like they have to approve them,” Bellinger said.
Held says she has experienced first-hand the effects of the climate crisis, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. On her family's ranch where she grew up, drought wreaked havoc on livestock health and crops, and extreme weather limited her ability to spend time outdoors. Between the filing of Held v. Montana in 2020 and the plaintiffs' victory in the case three years later, global warming worsened, she said.
“We don't have another five years to wait for protection while the government continues to use fossil fuels,” she said. “It's really urgent.”
