In a closing argument, Attorney Nate Bellinger urged Judge Kathy Seeley to overturn a Montana law that forbids state agencies from considering environmental impacts when issuing permits for greenhouse gas releases, The Associated Press reported.
Throughout the seven-day Held v Montana trial, the plaintiffs maintained that officials disregarded their constitutional right to a healthful and clean environment, by enabling companies to build and expand fossil fuel infrastructure, according to the AP.
“The state of Montana comes before this court because of a pervasive systemic infringement of rights,” Bellinger said.
The right in question is a Montana Constitution amendment adopted in 1972, which indicated that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.”
During the trial, plaintiffs said that they have been encountering longer wildfire seasons, as well as smoke-filled summers and dwindling rivers, Montana Public Radio reported.
Bellinger argued that the state has exacerbated the crisis by enacting a 2023 law that barred state regulators from considering greenhouse gas releases when permitting energy projects, the NPR affiliate explained.
Lawyers for the state spent only one day presenting their side, arguing that climate change is a global issue and that limiting emissions in Montana would not affect the plaintiffs’ lives, according to Montana Public Radio.
“What we heard in plaintiff’s case is not constitutional controversy, but rather a week-long airing of political grievances that probably belongs in the Legislature, not a court of law,” Montana Assistant Attorney General Michael Russell said.
Heading into the trial, one legal expert questioned what it would take “to give teeth” to the 1972 constitutional provision in an analysis published by New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice.
The plaintiffs would need to prove causal connections among the state’s actions, climate change and individual harms, wrote Michael Burger, executive director of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law.
“The trial will be a major stage for the nation to see contemporary climate attribution science, which links climate change to both slow onset changes in the environment and more immediate, short-term, extreme events,” Burger stated.
An explanatory piece in Nature likewise described how “climate science will get its day in court.”
Our Children’s Trust, the law firm representing the Montana youth, stressed in a press statement earlier this week that the plaintiffs are not seeking money.
“They are asking the court to declare that Montana’s fossil fuel energy policies and actions violate young people’s state constitutional rights,” the statement said.
Whether that request will be fulfilled now lies in the hands of Seeley, the district court judge, who is expected to issue a decision within a few months, according to Montana Public Radio.
