A Montana court last week ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in the case, Held v. Montana. Litigants sued under a state constitutional amendment guaranteeing a right to a healthy environment after the state sought to bar factoring in greenhouse gas emissions from new energy projects’ environmental reviews.
Experts said the decision is likely to add momentum in the six other states whose constitutions guarantee environmental protection in some form — New York, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
“There are suits we’re going to see going forward against fossil fuel companies [and] this might make those more viable,” said David Driesen, a professor at Syracuse University’s College of Law with a focus on environmental law. “It’s not direct precedent, but it suggests the courts should go ahead and apply normal legal principles to climate change.”
In the ruling, Judge Kathy Seeley of the 1st District Court in Montana wrote that “the science is unequivocal that dangerous impacts to the climate are occurring due to human activities, primarily from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels.”
Read more in a full report at TheHill.com.
