HELENA — Wednesday marked the long-awaited next step in a lawsuit that challenged the state of Montana over climate change.
The lawsuit Held v. Montana drew a ton of attention when it was heard in state district court last year. That pattern continued as justices of the Montana Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday in Helena. The chamber was already full 45 minutes before the arguments began, and dozens more people watched a live stream from an overflow room next door.
The Held case started back in 2020, when 16 young plaintiffs – aged between 5 and 22 – filed suit against the state. They claimed Montana’s policies on greenhouse gas emissions were contributing to climate change and harming their right to a “clean and healthful environment” – guaranteed under the state constitution.
“This case is about Montana's climate, Montana's constitution, and Montana's children,” said Roger Sullivan, an attorney for the plaintiffs, during Wednesday’s oral arguments.
Last year, after a weeklong trial in Helena, District Judge Kathy Seeley sided with the plaintiffs, in what supporters called a landmark decision. Her ruling invalidated a state law that prevented regulators from considering greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews.
The state appealed Seeley’s decision to the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, attorneys representing the state made the case that climate change and the surrounding issues are political questions, and courts aren’t the right place to resolve them.
Dale Schowengerdt argued that state agencies wouldn’t have the authority to deny a permit for a project based solely on greenhouse gas information in an environmental review. He said that meant what the plaintiffs were asking for wouldn’t resolve the climate-related harms they had pointed to.
“It's the nature of the harm and the relief required to alleviate that harm that puts this outside the context of a normal case,” he said. “It also is what introduces state agencies and the courts into, entangles them with, very difficult policy issues.”
Schowengerdt said the appropriate response for people concerned about a project is to challenge it during the permitting process, rather than in what he called an “abstract” case like this one. However, Justice Laurie McKinnon questioned how that would work if the law prevented agencies from considering these impacts at all.
“Right now nothing can be done – nothing, because of the limitation,” she said.
Attorneys for the state also argued climate change was too large-scale an issue for any decision in this case to make a difference. They claimed Seeley’s ruling overstated the effect Montana’s emissions would have.
“The state never did contest – and I hope this is clear – that there are anthropogenic, human factors that contribute to this problem – we were concerned that that point sort of got lost at trial,” said Mark Stermitz. “That doesn't mean that we feel that this global problem can be influenced in any way by a state district court judge in Montana.”
But plaintiffs’ attorneys said Montana is already in a “climate emergency,” and that agencies couldn’t truly evaluate or react to any possible impacts from projects within the state because the law had put “blinders” on them.
“What had happened in one permit approval after another was that they weren't properly evaluated – the large fossil fuel greenhouse gas emission permits were approved one after the other,” said Sullivan. “This is the appropriate mechanism to challenge what is going on impacting these youth plaintiffs, and indeed all young Montanans, now and into the future.”
After the arguments ended, plaintiffs and their attorneys held a news conference outside, where they pushed back against the state’s suggestion that decisions in Montana wouldn’t have a significant impact. Plaintiff Grace Gibson-Snyder said the state was evading responsibility.
“Why would you not be one piece of the complex solution to the complex problem?” she asked. “Why would you not use this case as an opportunity to create momentum into the future?”
The Supreme Court generally doesn’t take any immediate action after an oral argument. Chief Justice Mike McGrath said the court would make a ruling in due course.
