Ripley Cunningham took the microphone and looked out at an audience of about 350 people in the echoey, ornate rotunda of Montana’s state Capitol, her favorite thrift-store flower pendant around her neck. It was January, the start of the legislative session, and the high school senior, a speech and debate star, was emceeing a statewide climate gathering. “I am comforted in knowing that we have an interconnected community of people fighting for the future of our home,” she said. Cunningham, who’d just turned 18, added that she’d not yet been able to vote in an election, but “being here today helps me realize the power that my voice carries and the change that it can create.”
Cunningham and five other members of Green Initiative, a student climate club at Park High School, a public school in Livingston, Montana, had driven hours along icy, wind-drifted roads to get here. Just weeks earlier, Montana’s Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling in favor of a group of young people who sued the state over its climate inaction in Held v. Montana. Now, state lawmakers had to implement that decision. As Cunningham spoke, the Green Initiative members who were in the audience hoisted a massive sign: “PROTECT OUR HOME.”
Livingston, population about 9,000, is located in a fossil fuel-driven, Republican-led state whose leaders are working to quash any action to slow climate change. But Park High’s Green Initiative is an incubator for climate action, and these students aim to show those in power that there’s still a groundswell of resistance.
“I am comforted in knowing that we have an interconnected community of people fighting for the future of our home.”
Nearly 50 students have come through Green Initiative since the program began in 2017. Former science teacher Alecia Jongeward — who still sponsors the club, though she’s left teaching — started it by sorting through the school’s trash for recyclables with students. They won a small grant to get recycling bins at the school. Then they won more grants and awards, including one for a feasibility study from the state for solar panels on the school that led to the installation of the panels themselves. Members have performed climate-related monologues and held “trashion” shows to highlight sustainable clothing. They’ve served on a state-appointed committee to help Montana review its environmental policies and organized and attended protests. The inaugural statewide climate summit they hosted drew dozens of students from across Montana. Last year, they even won a $400,000 grant from the federal government for electric school buses.
Perhaps most visibly, a Green Initiative participant was one of the 16 plaintiffs in Held who alleged that, through its fossil fuel-centric policies, the state was violating their constitutionally enshrined right to “a clean and healthful environment.” In particular, they challenged a rule related to the Montana Environmental Policy Act, or MEPA, that excluded the impacts of greenhouse gas emissions from environmental reviews.
In summer 2023, the case went to trial. Over the course of a week, young people and climate experts took the stand. Home-schooled Green Initiative participant Eva Lighthiser recalled recent climate-related catastrophes that affected Livingston: a parasite outbreak on the Yellowstone River, a historic flood, and oppressive, depressing smoke from wildfires summer after summer. “I felt like I needed to take action, and this felt like a way to do it,” she testified.
In August 2023, the judge ruled against the state, which appealed to the Montana Supreme Court. When the court affirmed the ruling in December, Held became the first case in the country in which youth sued the government over climate change — and won.
“IT GAVE ME a lot of hope that we are going to be able to make independent change within our community and, hopefully, within the state,” said Jorja McCormick, a Green Initiative member who loves hiking and embroiders her own shoes. But the pushback came fast. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte, both Republicans, released statements saying the Supreme Court decision would hurt Montana’s economy and lead to endless litigation.
Now, lawmakers have to figure out how to incorporate the decision into the state’s environmental reviews. Republican legislators introduced a suite of bills to reshape such reviews in this year’s legislative session. Proposed laws would exclude whole categories of projects from MEPA, remove language that requires reviews to analyze long-term impacts, strike a sentence that connects MEPA to protecting Montanans’ right to a clean and healthful environment, and prevent the state from implementing air quality standards stricter than the federal government’s. Another bill tackled the Held decision head-on, mandating that environmental reviews consider only “proximate” impacts. Imagine, say, a coal project on state land: The environmental analysis could include only emissions associated with the mining project itself, not the transport or burning of that coal.
“I felt like I needed to take action, and this felt like a way to do it.”
At the time of writing, the MEPA bills have strong Republican support and seem likely to pass. Asked about the bills at a press conference in February, Gianforte said, “I’m looking forward to getting them on my desk.” Montana Republicans also put forth dozens of bills designed to check what they describe as judicial overreach, in part inspired by the Held decision. In press conferences and podcasts, lawmakers dismissed the students behind the case as “activists” and “a bunch of little Greta Thunbergs.”
The rhetoric and legislation in Montana echo the current federal approach to climate change. But Held paved the way for even larger, nationwide action: Our Children’s Trust, the nonprofit law firm that represented the Held plaintiffs, has active youth climate cases in Alaska, Hawai’i, Utah, Florida and Virginia, with the Held decision providing precedent that these cases can make it to trial, and win. And late last year, the young people pursuing Juliana v. United States appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their claims against the federal government.
The Held case, Jongeward said, fueled the Green Initiative students’ commitment to local environmental action. One member, Oliver Zeman, is an avid kayaker focused on cleaning up local rivers. Home-schooler Anders Harrison is planning an upcoming community hiking trip. Cunningham, the speech and debate standout, is helping students across the state learn how to get involved in the legislative process. Green Initiative alumni have been valedictorians and received full-ride scholarships to college. “They’re amazing,” Jongeward told me. “It’s incredible to see the drive that young people can have if you just give them the platform.”
At a recent meeting, Jongeward started things off with some tough news. The federal grant they’d been awarded for electric school buses was facing some school board opposition. The students, though, were ready to fight.
“I’ll go speak. I’ll go chew ’em out, Ms. J.,” Cunningham said.
The group was overflowing with ideas: They could write a letter, maybe submit it to the local newspaper, and compile air quality data on what the diesel emissions from the current buses mean for the area outside the school. The battle was far from over. (In fact, just before this story went to print, the school board approved the grant.)
McCormick reflected on the Held decision and the kids behind it. “I can get electric buses in our school system; that’s easy, compared to what they did,” she said. “(The case) set the bar, and now we just have to reach it.”
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This article appeared in the April 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Checking in with Montana’s youth climate activists.”
