Climate Rights
MICA KANTOR IS a long-distance runner. At 15 years old, he enjoys unplugging from his phone while he runs outdoors. But as wildfires have become more frequent in recent years, smoky days have increasingly limited his ability to train outside. That makes him “feel trapped,” he said recently in a Montana state courtroom, “like I can’t get my mind off of things.”
Sariel Sandoval, 20, a member of the Bitterroot Salish, Upper Pend d’Oreille, and Diné tribes, grew up picking huckleberries with her family and listening to coyote stories. Some tales, which have been passed down through generations, are told only when there is snow on the ground. “One day we’re not going to have any snow on the ground,” she testified in court. “What happens to those stories?”
Olivia Vesovich, a 20-year-old artist, says her allergies have become more and more painful in recent years, even swelling her eyes shut at times. On top of that, wildfire smoke has been triggering her asthma. “I feel like I can’t breathe, and that’s a terrifying feeling,” she said.
Kantor, Sandoval, and Vesovich are among a group of 16 young people, ages 5 to 22, who sued Montana in 2020 for contributing to the climate crisis. All three took to the witness stand this summer in Held v. Montana, laying bare, in sometimes emotional testimony, the ways in which climate change has impacted their physical, mental, and cultural health. In August, the district court judge ruled in their favor in a landmark win for the climate movement.
The lawsuit was highly anticipated in climate circles. It was the first youth-led climate case to go to trial in the United States. It was also the first constitutional climate case to go to trial in the country, meaning the legal argument for this case rested on inalienable rights bestowed to all Montanans in the state constitution.
“There’s never been a trial like this in our history,” said one of the lead attorneys in the case, Nate Bellinger, of Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit law firm representing the plaintiffs. There are, however, sure to be more: Youth plaintiffs across the country are gearing up to fight for their climate rights in several other cases.
Journal Managing Editor Zoe Loftus-Farren writes about this ground-breaking climate case and how it is centered around a relatively unique constitutional protection — a “green amendment” that guarantees the right “to a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations” in our Autumn 2023 print issue. “The growing movement to pass green amendments like this in other states around the country... could be a game changer in the fight for climate action,” she writes.
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