Held v. Montana is a youth-led constitutional climate lawsuit in which 16 young Montanans sued the state for promoting fossil fuel development while forbidding its own agencies from weighing climate impacts. A state district court ruled for the plaintiffs in August 2023 after the first rights-based climate trial in U.S. history, and the Montana Supreme Court affirmed the decision 6-1 in December 2024, holding that the state constitution’s right to a clean and healthful environment includes a stable climate system.1 The case did not end there. The 2025 legislature passed a package of laws aimed at blunting the ruling, and most of the original plaintiffs are back in court in a sequel action known as Held v. Montana II.
What the Plaintiffs Were Challenging
The suit, filed March 13, 2020, targeted two specific pieces of the Montana Environmental Policy Act rather than asking a court to design climate policy. The central target was the “MEPA Limitation” at Mont. Code Ann. § 75-1-201(2)(a), which prohibited state agencies from considering greenhouse gas emissions or climate change when reviewing energy and mining projects. It also excluded impacts that were “regional, national, or global in nature,” which shielded fossil fuel permits from any climate analysis at all.
The second target was a provision added by Senate Bill 557 in the 2023 session and codified at § 75-1-201(6)(a)(ii). It barred courts from vacating, voiding, or delaying any permit based on inadequate climate or greenhouse gas analysis, cutting off the only remedy available to challenge a permit issued without that review. Both SB 557 and the related House Bill 971 were passed by the Republican supermajority in response to a separate ruling that had revoked an air quality permit for a NorthWestern Energy gas plant in Laurel on climate grounds.
The lead plaintiff is Rikki Held, who grew up in Montana and later earned a degree in environmental science from Colorado College. The 16 plaintiffs ranged in age from children to teenagers at the time of filing, with several of the younger ones appearing through guardians. They are represented by Our Children’s Trust, a nonprofit that has built a national strategy around youth-led constitutional climate litigation, with Supervising Senior Staff Attorney Nate Bellinger leading the team alongside the Western Environmental Law Center and attorneys Roger Sullivan and Phil Gregory.
Why Montana’s Constitution Made the Case Possible
The case rests on language that Montana’s framers wrote into the state’s 1972 constitution. Article II, Section 3 lists the right to “a clean and healthful environment” among the inalienable rights of all Montanans. Because it sits in the declaration of rights, courts treat it as a fundamental right subject to strict scrutiny, the most demanding standard of judicial review. Article IX, Section 1 reinforces that right, requiring that “the state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” and directing the legislature to provide remedies for “the protection of the environmental life support system from degradation.”
The Montana Supreme Court had already interpreted those provisions aggressively. In a 1999 decision, the court called the environmental protections “anticipatory and preventative,” writing that “our Constitution does not require dead fish to float on the surface of our state’s rivers and streams before its farsighted environmental protections can be invoked.”
The Trial and Judge Seeley’s 2023 Ruling
Trial opened June 12, 2023, in Helena before First Judicial District Court Judge Kathy Seeley and ran through June 20. The plaintiffs put on a scientific record the state largely did not dispute, including evidence that Montana was responsible for 166 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions in 2019 alone, and 3.7 billion tons cumulatively since 1960. Each of the 16 plaintiffs testified about physical and mental health harms, impacts to their homes and property, cultural traditions, economic security, and overall well-being. The court recognized psychological injuries such as loss, despair, and anxiety as cognizable harms, likening the framing to the psychological findings in Brown v. Board of Education.
On August 14, 2023, Judge Seeley ruled for the plaintiffs. She found they had suffered “past and ongoing injuries” from the state’s refusal to consider greenhouse gas emissions, and that “every additional ton of GHG emissions exacerbates Plaintiffs’ injuries and risks locking in irreversible climate injuries.” Interpreting the clean environment right as “forward-looking,” she held the state had an obligation to prevent environmental degradation before it occurs. Because the right is fundamental, the challenged laws had to survive strict scrutiny, and the state offered no compelling interest to justify them.
Judge Seeley declared both the MEPA Limitation and the SB 557 provision facially unconstitutional and permanently enjoined their enforcement. The ruling was declaratory. It did not order Montana to reject specific energy projects or adopt an emissions reduction plan. It removed the legal prohibition on considering climate impacts in agency permitting, restoring what the court called “fully informed and considered decision making.”
The Montana Supreme Court’s December 2024 Decision
The Montana Attorney General filed a notice of appeal on September 29, 2023, and Governor Greg Gianforte followed on October 2. The state sought a stay of the district court’s order while the appeal proceeded, but the Supreme Court denied the motion in January 2024.
Oral arguments took place July 10, 2024. On December 18, 2024, the Montana Supreme Court issued a 70-page opinion affirming the district court in a 6-1 ruling authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath. The majority held that the constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment includes a “stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.” Chief Justice McGrath described the Montana Constitution as a “living thing” capable of adapting to new environmental threats and characterized the 1972 provisions as “the strongest environmental protection provision found in any state constitution.”
On standing, the court rejected the state’s argument that the plaintiffs’ injuries were too widely shared to be legally cognizable, holding that constitutional harm does not require an injury distinguishable from the general public. It also dismissed the “negligible contribution” defense, refusing to immunize the state from suit because climate change is a global problem. On the merits, the court ruled that the MEPA Limitation was unconstitutional because it arbitrarily excluded greenhouse gas emissions from environmental reviews “without regard to the nature or volume of the emissions.”
Justice Jim Rice was the lone dissenter. He argued the plaintiffs had failed to show a “concrete current or impending violation” caused by the MEPA framework and warned the majority’s approach could lead to “ad hoc judicial natural resources management.” Justice Dirk Sandefur concurred in the outcome but called the climate discussion “a political and public policy statement of the obvious” and expressed doubt about how environmental reviews could practically address a global problem. He separately criticized the state’s attempt during the district court phase to compel psychiatric evaluations of the youth plaintiffs, calling it “patently ridiculous and overly intrusive.”
Attorney Fees
On September 16, 2025, Judge Seeley awarded the plaintiffs $2,857,193 in attorney fees and $98,667.73 in costs. The court applied a rebuttable presumption under Montana law that citizens who must sue to vindicate a constitutional right should not have to bear the cost of doing so. Judge Seeley found the state had not overcome that presumption, citing the gravity of the case and the number of people affected. The fees went to Our Children’s Trust, the Western Environmental Law Center, Roger Sullivan, and Phil Gregory. The Attorney General’s Office indicated it would likely appeal.
The 2025 Legislative Response
Governor Gianforte responded to the Supreme Court ruling by accusing the justices of “stepping outside of its lane to tread on the right of the Legislature” and warning of “perpetual lawsuits that will waste taxpayer dollars and drive up energy bills.” Incoming Senate President Matt Regier and House Speaker Brandon Ler accused the justices of “overstepping their authority” and told them to “buckle up.”
The legislature followed through. On May 1, 2025, Governor Gianforte signed a package of bills designed to limit the practical reach of the ruling:
- House Bill 285, sponsored by Speaker Ler, declared MEPA a purely procedural tool with no independent regulatory authority. It prohibited agencies from withholding, denying, or conditioning permits based solely on MEPA findings; excluded greenhouse gas and climate impact analysis from environmental reviews, with narrow exceptions for joint federal-state reviews; barred attorney fee awards in MEPA challenges; and imposed strict bonding requirements for anyone seeking injunctive relief. It passed along party lines.
- Senate Bill 221, sponsored by Sen. Wylie Galt, directed the Department of Environmental Quality to develop guidance on greenhouse gas assessments for both fossil fuel and non-fossil fuel activities. Plaintiffs allege it narrowed the scope of MEPA reviews by excluding “indirect” actions.
- House Bill 291 prohibited the state from adopting air pollutant standards more stringent than federal regulations, blocking Montana from setting its own greenhouse gas limits.
The Montana Environmental Information Center and other environmental groups characterized the package as an effort to reduce MEPA to a “paper exercise.”
Held v. Montana II
Thirteen of the original plaintiffs, joined by three new Montana youth, filed a petition for original jurisdiction with the Montana Supreme Court on December 10, 2025, challenging the 2025 laws under the same constitutional provisions vindicated in the first case. On December 23, 2025, the Supreme Court denied the petition, ruling the plaintiffs had not shown why they needed to bypass the trial court and noting they had waited seven months after the laws took effect to file.
The plaintiffs refiled in the First Judicial District Court in Broadwater County on January 16, 2026, again before Judge Seeley. The state responded with a motion to dismiss portions of the case and a motion to transfer venue to Richland County under Senate Bill 97, a 2025 law requiring constitutional challenges to legislation to be heard in the district where the bill’s sponsor resides. Because Speaker Ler sponsored HB 285, the transfer would move the case roughly 450 miles from Helena to eastern Montana.
The plaintiffs are also challenging SB 97 itself, arguing it violates separation of powers by letting legislators pick their preferred courtroom, infringes on due process and access to courts by forcing litigants hundreds of miles away, and amounts to viewpoint discrimination by singling out people who challenge new laws. The ACLU of Montana filed an amicus brief on March 20, 2026, supporting those arguments and noting that a similar Kentucky venue law had been struck down. During legislative debate on SB 97, supporters had openly stated that moving cases out of Helena would produce outcomes more favorable to the government because judges and legislators in rural districts share a “constituency.” The plaintiffs filed briefs opposing both the motion to dismiss and the venue transfer on March 17, 2026, and the case is awaiting the state’s response.
How Held Differs From Juliana v. United States
Our Children’s Trust had been pursuing a parallel federal case, Juliana v. United States, since 2015, when 21 youth plaintiffs alleged federal energy policies violated their constitutional rights. The Ninth Circuit ruled in 2020 that the plaintiffs lacked standing because their injuries were not redressable by courts, and in 2024 it ordered the district court to dismiss the case. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take it up in March 2025.
The Montana case succeeded where the federal case did not in part because of its narrower focus. The Held plaintiffs challenged specific statutory provisions and asked the court to strike those laws down, rather than seeking a court-supervised remedial plan. Montana’s unusually strong constitutional environmental protections also provided a legal foundation with no direct federal equivalent.