Montana v. Held: Do Green Amendments Truly Promise Environmental Protection?
Eliza Kreske
Introduction
As federal climate action has remained inconsistent and politically volatile, advocates have increasingly turned to state constitutions as another avenue for environmental protection. The following analysis examines the scope and limitations of the Held v. State ruling from the Montana Supreme Court and forecasts the ongoing litigation that will ultimately determine its applicability to climate lawsuits moving forward.
Indications of the ultimate impact of “the first judicial decision directly tying climate change to Constitutional rights” in the nation are on the horizon.[1] In 2024, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed that the state’s energy policies violated “Montanans’ right to a clean and healthful environment.”[2] The case garnered national attention, and many considered it a landmark opinion.[3] The Court ruled that the Montana Environmental Policy Act (“MEPA”) Limitation was unconstitutional under Article II §3 of the Montana State Constitution because it banned the consideration of greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions when setting environmental policy. The novelty has led to limited analysis of the legislative and judicial impacts but in 2025, the same plaintiffs who brought the original case filed a suit challenging Montana legislation passed in May of 2025.[4] This suit offers an opportunity to analyze the impacts of the original Held ruling and the potential viability of reliance on state constitutional provisions to combat harmful climate legislation.
Held v. State
The narrow scope of the Held ruling is likely to hinder the success of future suits relying on it. 16 youths, between 2 and 18, sued the State of Montana, the Governor, and multiple state agencies.[5] They sought a “declaration that certain provisions of Montana’s State Energy Policy. . . and the Montana Environmental Policy Act. . . were unconstitutional.”[6] The provisions “prevented state agencies from considering environmental impacts outside of Montana’s borders when conducting environmental reviews” and “provided that courts could not ‘vacate, void, or delay’ proposed projects on climate grounds.”[7] The original ruling decided only that the Montana Constitution “does not permit the Legislature to prohibit environmental reviews from evaluating GHG emissions.”[8] The plaintiffs in Held were successful in part because their specific focus on GHG emissions allowed the Court to find redressability in the request and thus uphold standing, but this specificity may limit their ability to contest future legislation.[9]
In the original Held ruling, the court ruled that the standard for redressability was met despite the fact that “declaring [the MEPA limitation] unconstitutional will do little to reverse climate change.”[10] The court declared that its focus was “not on redressing climate change, but on redressing [plaintiff’s] constitutional injuries: whether the MEPA Limitation unconstitutionally infringes on [their] right to a clean and healthful environment.”[11] Thus, the question for the court was “whether legal relief [could] effectively alleviate, remedy, or prevent Plaintiffs’ constitutional injury, not on whether declaring a law unconstitutional [would] effectively stop or reverse climate change.”[12] The court ruled that the specific prohibition on GHG emissions was unconstitutional because it prevented state agencies from using information at their disposal to strengthen regulatory decisions or consider alternatives to avoid environmental harm.[13] They also emphasized that the limitation arbitrarily excluded GHG emissions.[14]
The applicability of this narrow holding will soon be tested by Montana state courts. Now, many of the same plaintiffs who brought suit in the original Held case are suing Montana Governor, Greg Gianforte, and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality following the recent passage of House Bills 285 and 291 and Senate Bill 221.[15] The new MEPA provisions offer a new definition of a proposed action, excluding “an upstream, downstream, or other indirect action that occurs independently or is caused in part or exclusively by the proposed action.”[16] They also restrict the scope of review of a proposed action to the “proximate” effects.[17] Agencies now “may not withhold, deny, or impose conditions on any permit or other authority to act” following MEPA review.[18] Finally, the new provisions to the Montana Clean Air Act restrict requirements governing emission standards, mandating that they cannot exceed federal standards with limited, emergency exceptions.[19]
It is not immediately evident that the Held ruling bars Montana from passing these provisions. The new provisions do not outright ban the agencies from considering any factors that directly contribute to climate change. And they are likely not sufficiently arbitrary, given the protestations of corporations against the short-term costs of adopting more stringent regulations.[20] So far, the Montana Supreme Court denied the plaintiffs request for declaratory judgment, ruling that “they do not address why a district court would not be equipped to consider the legal issues in a timely fashion and permit them to present an appeal in the ordinary course.”[21] Whether the Montana courts find that the original Held ruling bars the legislative provisions in this case remains to be seen.
Conclusion
The Held ruling represents a meaningful, if narrow, step forward in the use of state constitutional law to address climate change. By grounding its decision in the specific prohibition on GHG emission review rather than in a sweeping mandate for environmental protection, the Montana Supreme Court preserved the suit’s justiciability while necessarily constraining its reach. As the new litigation challenging House Bills 285 and 291 and Senate Bill 221 demonstrates, Montana’s legislature has already responded to the original Held decision. The ultimate impact of Held will depend on whether state courts are willing to extend its logic to subtler forms of legislation restricting agency ability to combat climate change. The impact of this litigation may not be limited to Montana. Five other states have recognized a constitutional right to a clean environment: Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.[22] No matter the outcome, the case has established that state constitutions are a potentially powerful arena for climate litigation.
[1] Matthew Grabianski, What Held v. Montana Immediately Offers for Constitutional Environmental Rights, Geo. L. Rev.: F. Blog (Nov. 16, 2023), https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/blog/what-held-v-montana-immediately-offers-for-constitutional-environmental-rights/.
[2] Held v. State, 2024 MT 312, ¶ 73, 419 Mont. 403, 560 P.3d 1235.
[3] See, e.g., Symposium, Constitutionalizing Climate Rights, 19 FIU L. Rev. 1029, 1036 (2025).
[4] Held v. State, 2025 Mont. LEXIS 1588, 425 Mont. 538, 581 P.3d 380.
[5] Held, 2024 MT 312 at ¶ 5.
[6] Id. at ¶ 5.
[7] Sam Bookman, What We Learned in Held v. Montana, Harv. Env’t L. Rev. Online 1, 3 (2024), https://journals.law.harvard.edu/elr/wp-content/uploads /sites/79/2024/04/Sam.Bookman.What_.we_.learned.from_.Held_.pdf.
[8] Held, 2024 MT 312 at ¶ 75-76.
[9] See Bookman, supra note 7 at 4.
[10] Held, 2024 MT 312 at ¶ 51.
[11] Id at ¶ 51.
[12] Id at ¶ 52.
[13] Id at ¶ 75-76.
[14] Id at ¶ 75-76.
[15] Micah Drew, Youth Climate Plaintiffs File Suit in State District Court, Daily Montanan (Jan. 20, 2026), https://dailymontanan.com/2026/01/20 /youth-climate-plaintiffs-file-suit-in-statedistrictcourt/#:~:text=by% 20Micah%20Drew%2C%20Daily%20Montanan,climate%20system.
[16] Mont. Code Ann. § 75-1-220(11)(b)(i) (2025).
[17] Mont. Code Ann. § 75-1-201(1)(a)(iv)(A)-(B) (2025).
[18] Mont. Code Ann. § 75-1-109(3)(a) (2025).
[19] Mont. Code Ann. §§ 75-2-203(2)(a); 207(1).
[20] Todd Cort, Are Companies Abandoning Climate Action?, Yale Insights: Three Questions (Apr. 04, 2025), https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/are-companies-abandoning-climate-action#:~:text=Other%20reasons%20 include:%20*%20**Cost%20implications%20of,Battery%20technology%20*%20Minerals%20reuse%20and%20reprocessing.
[21] Held, 2025 Mont. LEXIS 1588 at *3.
[22] Romany Webb, Environmental Rights in State Constitutions, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law: Climate Litigation (Aug. 31, 2021), https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/climatechange/2021/08/31/environmental-rights-in-state-constitutions/.