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In the wake of a high-profile court decision that upended the state of Montana’s climate policy, Republican lawmakers in the state are pushing a suite of bills that could gut the state’s ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The full-court legislative press targets the state’s environmental analysis, air quality regulation, and judicial system. It stems from the Held v. Montana case in which 16 young people sued the state over its contributions to climate change, claiming its fossil fuel-centric approach to energy violated the state constitution’s guarantee of a “clean and healthful environment.” The plaintiffs won, and in December 2024, the Montana Supreme Court upheld their victory.

The case “didn’t just make headlines,” Montana Republican Representative Greg Oblander, a sponsor of one of the bills that could hobble climate action in the state, said in a press conference. “It sent shockwaves through the Montana economy.”

He said the case “was an open invitation for activists to weaponize our environmental laws against the very industries that keep Montana running and Montanans employed.”

The fallout of the Held decision animated the breadth of the state’s 90-day legislative session, poised to end by early May, and bills weakening the state’s bedrock environmental policy are almost certain to be signed into law by the state’s Republican governor. Nonetheless, the battle is likely to continue in the courts.

A clean and healthful environment

The Held decision hinged on Montana’s constitutional protections of the environment. Framers in the state’s 1972 Constitutional Convention took the state’s environmental woes seriously. Extractive industries like mining and logging had left a lasting environmental toll on the air, water, and land in the state, and for decades, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company wielded enormous power at the state legislature, resulting in large-scale mining, logging, and other extractive industry. Today, Montana is home to the largest complex of Superfund sites, or government toxic waste cleanups, in the country.