December 31, 2024

Pacifica Clients Celebrate Landmark Climate Change Win for Montana Youths

Pacifica is delighted to end 2024 in celebration with our clients of the Montana Supreme Court’s historic decision affirming that its citizens have a constitutional right to a clean and healthy environment. In Held v. State of Montana, the Court upheld a ruling by the First Judicial District Court of Montana in favor of a group of 16 youths (the “Youth Plaintiffs”) who sued the State in 2020. The Youth Plaintiffs successfully argued that Montana violated their right to a clean and healthy environment, and that certain State energy laws and policies that threatened that right were unconstitutional.

At trial in the District Court, the plaintiffs discussed the negative impact of climate change on their lives, including harms to their physical and emotional wellbeing and development. These harms included fear about melting glaciers and disappearing native wildlife; loss of economic and recreational opportunities due to wildfires, drought, and other extreme weather events; and anxiety about raising children in an increasingly unstable environment.

Pacifica is proud to have represented a coalition of outdoor recreation industry businesses and nonprofits in filing an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs. The coalition included Patagonia, Orvis, Trail Head Inc., School of Trout, Conservation Hawks, Yaak Valley Forest Council, The Montana Project, Big Hole Lodge, Brant Oswald Fly Fishing, and R.L. Winston Rod Company (collectively “Outdoor Recreation Industry Members”).

Pacifica’s senior litigation partner, Paul Lawrence, represented the coalition alongside attorneys Rebecca L. Davis and Brian B. Flynn of Lozeau Drury LLP.

In the amicus brief, Pacifica’s clients supported the plaintiffs’ assertion that climate change negatively impacts their recreational and economic opportunities. The brief emphasized the increased, direct threat posed by climate change to the outdoor industry, which is more valuable to Montana’s GDP and job market than mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction combined. “Tellingly, there are more American jobs in the hunting and fishing industry alone than the entire oil and gas extraction industry,” the brief argued.

It also offered several alarming examples of the environmental and economic impact of climate change, including to Montana’s iconic Glacier National Park, which, the brief noted, “may have no glaciers left by the end of the century thereby threatening the estimated $484 million in economic benefits and over 5,200 jobs supported by the park.”

Finally, the brief urged the Supreme Court to uphold the District Court’s decision to strike down as unconstitutional a section of the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) which prohibited the evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions in environmental reviews of State-sponsored projects.

“A clean and healthful environment cannot be insured if Appellants continue to approve projects without considering their impacts on climate change,” the brief argued.

Please click here to read the brief.