The Clean and Healthful Environment in the Courts—Part III: Setting the Stage for the "Youth Climate" Case

(first published on June 1, 2026 at https://andersnewbury.substack.com)

Montana’s constitutional Right to a Clean and Healthful Environment had to wait until 2020 for its first major twenty-first century showdown at the state supreme court. The case, Park Cnty. Env’t Council v. Montana Dep’t of Env’t Quality, 2020 MT 303, has set the stage for the famous “youth climate” cases to follow.

In Park County, community members challenged the Montana Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ’s) issuance of a permit for exploratory drilling for a potential gold mine outside of Yellowstone National Park. In particular, the challengers took issue with the sufficiency of DEQ’s environmental analysis conducted under the Montana Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) which, like its federal counterpart, requires the government to forecast environmental impacts likely to result from a project conducted or permitted by the government. At the trial court, DEQ conceded that some of its review was insufficient and should be re-done.

Notwithstanding this concession, statutory amendments made to MEPA in 2011 forbade a court from issuing an injunction to pause a project while remedial MEPA analysis was carried out. Id., ¶ 57 (citing § 75-1-201(6), MCA). As a result, the government’s concession was ultimately empty: the exploratory drilling would go forward either way. The challengers attacked these statutory amendments as unconstitutionally neutering MEPA’s environmental protections. Park County, ¶¶ 52-53.

In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, the Court struck down the 2011 amendments as unconstitutional, reaching several notable holdings along the way. First, the Court connected injunctive relief to MEIC’s holding (discussed in a previous post) that the constitutional right at hand was “anticipatory and preventative.” Article IX, § 3 directs the Legislature to “provide remedies to prevent unreasonable” environmental harm. (Emphasis added.) See Park County, ¶ 63. According to the Park County Court, “Montanans have a right not only to reactive measures after a constitutionally-proscribed environmental harm has occurred, but to be free of its occurrence in the first place.” Id. ¶ 62. Citing the Constitutional Convention transcripts, the Park County Court noted how injunctions, “unlike monetary damages, can avert harms that would have otherwise arisen” and concluded that injunctive “relief must play a role in the constitutional directive.” Id., ¶ 64.

The Park County Court then turned to MEPA’s place in the constitutional order. Id., ¶¶ 65-70. The Court addressed the Clean and Healthful Environment’s inauspicious 1979 debut in Kadillak, ultimately finding that case’s dismissive orientation “not persuasive.” Park County, ¶ 68. According to the Court, the Constitution’s drafters “likely saw MEPA as an essential element” of the Legislature’s environmental obligations: the statute was intended to preserve future generations’ access to a healthful environment through “anticipatory and preventative” procedures to encourage “fully informed” decisionmaking and avoid “irreversible mistakes” and “unintended consequences.” Id., ¶¶ 69-71. Allowing a project to go forward while an agency re-did its deficient environmental review was, in the words of the Park County Court, equivalent “to a mandatory aircraft inspection after takeoff.” Park County, ¶ 72.

The Court’s reference to MEPA as an “essential element” built on the MEIC holding to create what appears to be the operative legal test for Clean and Healthful Environment claims. A “redundant” environmental statute is not constitutionally protected. Id., ¶ 76. But a statute that is “unique” and “complementary to—rather than duplicative of—other environmental provisions” in preventing harm has constitutional status. Park County, ¶ 76. “Without some other equally proactive and preventative measure in place,” the Legislature could not simply gut MEPA’s injunctive relief—rather, it “remains essential to fulfilling the constitutional mandate.” Id., ¶¶ 76-78.

Finally, upon concluding that the 2011 amendments to MEPA were unconstitutional, the Park County Court turned to whether they were “facially” unconstitutional (i.e., in every instance) or only “as-applied” (in that particular case alone). Citing to both Citizens United and the concurring opinion in MEIC, the Court found that successful challenges to statutes under the Clean and Healthful Environment provision, like other fundamental rights, almost inevitably result in facial invalidations, due to the nature of the legal test. Park County, ¶¶ 86-89. Should the Montana Supreme Court stick to this reasoning going forward, future successful Clean and Healthful challenges should result in the challenged law being struck down outright, rather than requiring each and every aggrieved individual to raise their claim regarding the statute’s constitutionality anew.

Park County cemented the constitutional status of “essential” preventative environmental statutes in the 21st century, particularly for MEPA, a statute that has been steadily chipped away at in recent years and which might have otherwise been destined to become little more than a formality. In doing so, the Park County Court set the stage for perhaps the most well-known of Montana’s Clean and Healthful Environment disputes: the “youth climate case” in Held v. State.