One month after a court ruled that Montanan’s constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment isn’t being upheld, state environmental regulators are seeking public input about what to do next.

Starting Monday in Billings, the Department of Environmental Quality will hold listening sessions to address the shortcomings of the state’s Montana Environmental Policy Act. MEPA is a half-century old law requiring agencies to look before they leap on permitting, meaning they must review a project’s environmental, wildlife, historical and cultural impacts.

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Helena District Judge Kathy Seeley, in a landmark case decided in August, concluded that state agencies also needed to weigh climate change impacts in their permitting decisions, something the Montana Legislature had just a month before trial banned agencies from doing. The lawsuit, Held v. Montana, was brought by 16 youth plaintiffs who argued their lives were being harmed by Montana not regulating carbon dioxide emissions.

DEQ must now determine how to address those carbon dioxide emissions when permitting. The agency is framing the purpose of this listening session as updating a policy document that’s showing its age. Neither the lawsuit, nor the words climate change, or carbon dioxide appear anywhere in DEQ’s public notice for the October listening sessions planned for Billings, Helena, and Missoula, but the First Judicial District Court decision is the driver.

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“Held is a part of it, but the rest of it is that we’ve been meeting as an agency over the past year or more, trying to figure out how to better do MEPA,” said Rebecca Harbage, DEQ public policy director.

Post court order, regulators are weighing how to include carbon dioxide emissions in their environmental assessment process following years of legislation aimed at doing the exact opposite. For the most part, changes made to the Montana Environmental Policy Act by the Montana Legislature over several decades have favored industrial polluters, by limiting the public’s ability to affect permit outcomes.

Seeley ruled that the state’s current permitting practices violate the state constitution. But DEQ continues to permit projects without evaluating climate change. In considering an air permit for a biodiesel refinery in Great Falls, for example, DEQ said it won’t factor climate change impacts into its decision because the agency has appealed Held v. Montana to the Montana Supreme Court.

Conservation groups who have been waiting to see when DEQ would begin shaping policy to comply with the Held outcome were upset about the short notice for the Billings listening session. Notices went out Sept. 27, five days in advance.

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“This is the public’s first opportunity to meaningfully address climate policy, and we’re disappointed that DEQ gave minimal notice for this important issue,” said Joanie Kresich, Northern Plains Resource Council chairwoman in statement.

“Held v. Montana makes clear that the state can no longer give climate polluters a free pass while everyday Montanans pay the costs from increased natural disasters, the loss of crops and grazing grasses, decreased snowpack, expanded wildfire seasons, and significant harms to public health. Montanans can tell DEQ that the public will no longer absorb these undue burdens, and state policy must have robust and expansive climate analysis.”

Kresich said that participation was important because how DEQ shapes its environmental policy will affect the state’s future decisions.

“The Montana Constitution was drafted, in large part, because state decisions were being dictated by wealthy industrialists and corporations while everyday citizens were left in the dark without a voice,” Kresich said. “MEPA, in particular, upholds our constitutional right to know what our government is doing and have a say in decisions that impact our communities. Any changes to MEPA should expand citizens’ rights, which have slowly and dangerously eroded over the years.”

This spring, the Legislature’s Republican majority passed laws making it harder for Montanans to challenge state government permitting decisions. New laws made it more expensive for citizens to challenge government decisions on issues ranging from power plants and mining to the preservation of battlefields and wildlife. Instead of raising concerns during the permitting process, citizens are told they would have to wait until permits were issued and then file lawsuits. That courts-only route for challenging permits fundamentally altered the public’s First Amendment right to redress grievances about their government.

It was the during the legislative session that a District Court judge in Yellowstone County ruled that DEQ had ignored carbon emissions when permitting a gas-fired power plant under construction for Northwestern Energy near Laurel. No Montana judge had ever required DEQ to evaluate carbon emissions before and the ruling by now-retired Judge Michael Moses sent Republican legislators into a panic to save Northwestern’s power plant.

Not only did the lawmakers ban state agencies from regulating carbon dioxide emissions, but they made the law retroactive to cover the power plant near Laurel. Held v. Montana overturned the new ban on regulating carbon dioxide. The case is being appealed by Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen who discredited the judge and the proceeding when the ruling was issued.

“This ruling is absurd, but not surprising from a judge who let the plaintiff’s attorneys put on a weeklong taxpayer-funded publicity stunt that was supposed to be trial,” the AG’s office said in a press release after the ruling.

State agencies will have to adapt to the court order while the AG’s appeal is in process.

Harbage said gathering public input is the first step that will include written submissions to DEQ, which must be submitted by December 1.

The Billings session takes place from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Billings Convention Center, 1223 Mullowney Lane. The Helena session is Oct. 18, the Missoula session Oct. 19. All three events take place at the same hour, but locations for the latter two haven’t been decided. The public can also attend via Zoom, by registering online.