Montana Supreme Court Recognizes State Constitutional Right to a “Stable Climate System”
Last week, in Held v. Montana, the Montana Supreme Court held that the Montana Constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment” encompasses a right to a “stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.” On this basis it concluded that legislative amendments to the State Energy Policy Act and Montana Environmental Policy Act barring the consideration of climate impacts and impacts beyond Montana’s borders as part of statutorily mandated environmental reviews of some permit applications were unconstitutional. In the process, it also concluded that the citizen-suit plaintiffs had standing (in state court) to bring such claims. The vote was 6-1, with one justice dissenting on standing grounds.
Held v. Montana is the first decision by an appellate court in the United States recognizing a constitutional right to a “stable climate.” This is no doubt significant. Efforts to vindicate such a claim in federal court, as in the Juliana litigation, have been unsuccessful beyond the trial court level. Yet the legal significance of this case is somewhat limited. The decision only affects activities in Montana and is based on provisions in the Montana state constitution expressly recognizing a right to a clean and healthful environment. And as a policy matter, the actual judgment–invalidating a limitation on MEPA reviews–will have no meaningful impact on climate change whatsoever. What activists are hoping for is that Held will spur other courts to follow suit, or that it will encourage further efforts to adopt meaningful climate mitigation policies.
This is not the first Montana court decision concluding that citizens could sue in state court to vindicate their state constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment. Part of what is interesting (and perhaps path-breaking) about the Held decision is that it appears to be the first in which the plaintiffs did not need to be able to identify any tangible way in which their constitutional rights were violated (such as by a tangible change in environmental quality), nor did they need to identify any way in which a favorable judgment would redress such injuries (such as by preventing or ameliorating identifiable environmental harm). So while the Court adopted a standing inquiry that paralleled that which is required in federal court, the substance of that inquiry was far more permissive.
As interpreted by the majority, the state constitutional right to a stable climate system is violated insofar as the state barred state agencies from considering climate-related imapcts as part of a legislatively mandated environmental review process. So while there was no claim that the MEPA environmental review process was itself constitutionally mandated, the state could not choose to exempt certain environmental questions–such as the effect of permitted activities on global climate change–from that review process. That allowing such review–indeed, that prohibiting all greenhouse gas emissions from all of Montana–would not do much to lessen the impacts of climate change in Montana (or anywhere else for that matter) did not matter. Limiting what is considered in the MEPA review process, by itself, constitutes an “injury” to the plaintiffs constitutional right “to a clean and healthful environment.”
From Chief Justice McGrath’s opinion for t
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