MISSOULA — Grace Gibson-Snyder, a 21-year-old college student, says growing up in Missoula, she believes she’s already seen climate change have an impact on her life.
“When I played high school soccer here in Montana, we would have games and practices canceled because it was dangerous to be outside breathing in the smoky air,” she told MTN. “I grew up going to Glacier National Park, and I've seen the glaciers melting – and I want those glaciers to be around for the rest of my life and for my children’s life.”
Now, Gibson-Snyder is one of 22 young plaintiffs who’ve joined a federal lawsuit, challenging President Donald Trump’s energy policies. On Wednesday, a two-day hearing in that case wrapped up at the federal courthouse in Missoula.
(Watch the video to hear from a plaintiff and an attorney in this case.)
This lawsuit, Lighthiser v. Trump, seeks to block three executive orders the Trump administration says will “unleash” American energy production. Plaintiffs’ attorneys argue those orders are causing them direct harm, by encouraging more fossil fuel development – leading to more greenhouse gas emissions and other pollution.
The case mirrors the 2023 Held v. Montana trial, where some of the same youths successfully argued the state was violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment” under the Montana Constitution.
During the first day and a half of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen heard testimony from some of the plaintiffs about the harms they believe they face from the use of fossil fuels, as well as from other witnesses for the plaintiffs who attorneys argued would establish Trump’s executive orders weren’t justified.
On Wednesday afternoon, the courtroom was full once again as attorneys turned their attention to legal arguments.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction to stop the federal government from taking any action to implement Trump’s executive orders. Their attorneys argue this isn’t only a dispute over policy, but over the government doing things that would actively violate their rights.
“The U.S. Constitution under the Fifth Amendment protects every citizen’s right to life, and that means a number of things,” attorney Haley Nicholson told MTN. “But in this instance, we're asserting that the right to life that's implicated here is harm that the federal government is doing on these plaintiffs in a medically significant way.”
Plaintiffs’ attorneys said they wanted the judge to issue an order restoring the status quo as it was before Trump began his second term – before, they said, the administration took actions to short-circuit review of fossil fuel projects and undermine climate science. They said the plaintiffs could show they’d be specifically affected by the changes in these executive orders.
“The expert witnesses over the last two days testified that the scientific consensus is that each additional ton does matter to these plaintiffs and to the general public,” Nicholson said.
Attorneys for the federal government argued Christensen should dismiss the case. They pointed to several similar youth climate cases that have been thrown out – most notably Juliana v. United States, which the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed last year and which the U.S. Supreme Court declined to revive.
Michael Sawyer, representing the administration, said the facts of this case were too similar to the Juliana case to make a significant distinction.
“These are the same cases, your honor,” he told Christensen.
Sawyer said it’s overreach for a court to prevent the government from reconsidering policies that a previous administration put in place. He said what the plaintiffs were asking for was “unprecedented,” and that it would force the court to review hundreds or thousands of individual federal actions.
“If we begin down this path, it will grow and grow,” Sawyer said.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys argued this case was distinct enough from Juliana that it should be allowed to continue, because it’s focused on challenging only a few specific actions rather than years of federal policy.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Christensen said he was “troubled” at the practical impact of what an injunction might accomplish: that it could require the court to continuously review federal actions to see if they’re covered by his order, and that the government could simply take the same policy choices it would anyway but not use the executive orders to justify them.
Christensen took no immediate action after the end of the hearing.
The plaintiffs in this case come from states including California, Oregon, Florida and Hawaii, but 15 of them are from Montana. Of those, ten – including Gibson-Snyder – were plaintiffs in the Held case.
“For me, it feels like maybe the core difference there is that, in Held, we were seeking progress,” Gibson-Snyder said. “And now, in this case, in Lighthiser, we're seeking to go back to the status quo, ground zero, where we can then start to build progress from.”
She said she remains confident after the hearing.
“I know that we are operating from the truth, and I know that we have every right to have our constitutional rights protected,” she said.
