First constitutional climate change case went to trial: Preview of a likely new strategy to promote Fragilism

CATEGORY: COURTS

Thirteen of the 16 plaintiffs in Held v Montana. Rikki Held is back row, fourth from left.

Source: Daily Montanan
Read time: 2.5 minutes
 
This Happened
On December 18, 2024 the Montana Supreme Court ruled in favor of plaintiffs in the case of Held v Montana that they have a constitutional right to challenge man-made climate change, and the state must change how it evaluates projects for environmental impact.
 
Who Did This?
The plaintiffs were a group of sixteen children, ranging from two to eighteen years when the case was filed in 2020. Oregon-based law firm Our Children’s Trust brought the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs. The firm specializes in using groups of children as plaintiffs and filing in liberal courts to establish a new right for a healthy environment. They have active cases in Alaska, Florida, Hawai‘i, Utah, and Virginia.
 
The Premise
The case was filed in 2020 alleging that actions by the state of Montana exacerbated the harms that the sixteen children were feeling from man-made climate change. They sought two main things: (1) a declaration that they have legal standing to use a constitutional right to use man-made climate change as grounds for lawsuits, and (2) removal of a state law that was blocking analyses of climate impact on all new projects which require state approval.
In 2023, a district court ruled in their favor on all points. The State appealed to the Montana Supreme court. In December 2024, the Supreme Court’s decision, on a 6-1 vote, agreed with the district court.
 
The decision was based on the Montana state constitution, which was created in 1972 with a right to a “clean and healthful environment,” which is not part of the inalienable rights in the U.S. Constitution. The court ruled that climate is a domain of environment, and that man-made impact on the climate through carbon dioxide emissions was scientifically indisputable.
 
Analysis
A crucial aspect of determining legal standing to sue is that alleged wrongs must cause injuries to individuals. The court made an unusual ruling in this case that physical or mental injury did not need to be proven. Instead, any state law that impinges on the capacity to assess man-made climate effects is sufficiently harmful to their constitutional right.
 
The lone dissenting justice expressed alarm about this ruling. Because no physical or mental harm is needed to have standing to sue, the Court overstepped: This opens the door for citizens to challenge statutes by mere assertions that the State failed to protect citizens against harm.

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​The ball is now in the hands of the Montana state legislature to respond. If you learn of developments in this case that can be shared, please email those to our attention.

​Another concern is that the Supreme Court decision felt compelled to go above and beyond their legal ruling. “Although not necessary for our constitutional standing analysis…” they asserted humans are highly fragile and physical and mental injuries do exist. These included the fear plaintiffs feel from disappearing glaciers and culturally important native wildlife and plants (e.g., Plaintiffs Olivia and Grace expressed despair about having children in such a world), and the emotional distress they feel when wildfire smoke and extreme heat prevent enjoying outdoor activities.

The complete lack of equipoise about a complex scientific issue was disturbing. Despite the consensus in the academic and media liberal hegemony that man-made climate change is an existential crisis, many experts have thoroughly debunked that argument, but received little press [1,2].
 
What does this have to do with trauma?
This ruling by an activist court sets a precedent for citizens to sue based upon a mere assertion that a State actor failed to protect citizens. Trauma activists have worked persistently over the past two decades to install an intellectual framework of Fragilism about human nature with a plethora of alleged societal traumatic oppressions that cause permanent neurobiological harm. Based on the Montana precedent, we can easily imagine lawsuits against governments for failing to prevent trauma, regardless if evidence shows true harm. A climate-based trauma argument has already been extensively promulgated, for example, by Harvard’s activist Center for the Developing Child (see here) and in the form of so-called eco-anxiety by many scholars (see here).
 
 
REFERENCES
[1] Wrightstone G (2017). Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know. Silver Crown Productions, LLC: USA
[2] Koonin S (2021). Unsettled?: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters. BenBella Books: Dallas, TX.