Public Justice Announces Winner of 2025 Trial Lawyer of the Year Award
Each year, Public Justice is proud to present its Trial Lawyer of the Year Award to the trial attorney or legal team who made the greatest contribution to the public interest within the past year by trying or settling a socially significant case. The 2025 winner of the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award is the legal team behind Held v. State of Montana. The award was given at the 43rd annual Public Justice Gala and Awards Dinner, held on July 21, 2025, at the Four Seasons in San Francisco.
Julia Olson — co-executive director and chief legal counsel for Our Children’s Trust, as well as the lead counsel in Held v. Montana — said: “We are deeply honored and humbled to receive this award, which belongs first and foremost to the sixteen brave youth plaintiffs in Held v. Montana. Their courage in taking the stand and speaking truth to power helped secure a ruling that protects the rights of young people to a safe and stable climate.”
She continued: “Young people have always led civil rights and social justice movements, and we’re proud to stand alongside them as they use the courts to protect their fundamental rights against governments who wield their power to harm children. They don’t win money, but they win back their rights to health, a safe environment, and their basic human dignity.”
Held v. State of Montana was the first constitutional climate change case ever to go to trial; it secured a historic ruling from the Montana Supreme Court, striking down as unconstitutional a state law that forced government agencies to ignore greenhouse gas emission when approving fossil fuel projects and declared a fundamental right to a stable climate.
More than a dozen children — from the ages of two to 18 whose stories represent all youth in Montana — secured a powerful Montana Supreme Court opinion holding that provisions of Montana’s Environmental Policy Act (MEPA) violated their constitutional right to a “clean and healthful environment” because the statute forbade consideration of climate change impacts in the State’s environmental impact studies.
The groundbreaking win in Held was built on a decade of other youth-led climate cases filed around the country by Our Children’s Trust, including a 2011 case that was filed directly with the Montana Supreme Court. The Supreme Court dismissed that case on the basis that there were factual disputes about climate change. So, counsel worked with youth and experts throughout Montana to build the factual evidence for the Held case, and to develop and refine their legal theories starting in 2020. The Held victory sets the stage for science-based action on climate change in Montana and provides a roadmap to hold other governments accountable for their actions that exacerbate climate change and harm youth.
The trial court issued a landmark decision with 289 findings of fact and 67 conclusions of law, holding that the current greenhouse gas emissions levels are unconstitutionally degrading Montana’s environment and natural resources and violating plaintiffs’ fundamental rights, and that each additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution exacerbates plaintiffs’ injuries. Ultimately, the court found plaintiffs had standing, the challenged MEPA provisions were unconstitutional, and the State was enjoined from implementing them.
The State immediately appealed to the Montana Supreme Court and sought a stay of the trial court’s order, which stay was denied. In December 2024, the court ruled, 6 to 1, affirming the findings of the trial judge in full. The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Mike McGrath, held that a stable climate system was “clearly within the object and true principles of the Framers[’] inclusion of the right to a clean and healthful environment” in Montana’s Constitution, becoming only the second Supreme Court in the nation to make such a declaration.
In rejecting the State’s arguments that the constitutional protection was not meant to address global problems the State alone could not solve, Justice McGrath wrote: “We reject the argument that the delegates—intending the strongest all-encompassing environmental protections in the nation, both anticipatory and preventative, for present and future generations— would grant the State a free pass to pollute the Montana environment just because the rest of the world insisted on doing so.”
“This case exemplifies everything the Trial Lawyer of the Year Award was created to recognize,” said Public Justice Chief Executive Officer Sharon McGowan. “In an era of politics that places fossil fuel projects above our children’s right to a clean environment, a team of tenacious and dedicated advocates went to bat for children in Montana to assert that our youth are entitled to a ‘clean and healthful environment’ and won. Their inspiring victory is a powerful reminder that elected officials who disregard their obligation to protect the health and safety of the public can and will be held accountable for actions that intensify the effects of climate change and harm our children.”
A video highlighting the case was debuted at the Public Justice gala and can be found on the organization’s Youtube channel. Videos highlighting the other two finalist cases for this year’s Award — In re Red Dust Claims and Wren v. Affinitylifestyles.com Inc. and Brown v. Affinitylifestyles.com Inc. — are also now available.
Legal team:
Nate Bellinger, Julia Olson, and Mat dos Santos of Our Children’s Trust
Phil Gregory of Gregory Law Group
Barbara Chillcott and Melissa Hornbein of Western Environmental Law Center
Roger Sullivan of McGarvey Law
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Public Justice takes on the most significant systemic threats to justice of our time—abusive corporate power and predatory practices, the assault on civil rights and liberties, and the destruction of the earth’s sustainability. We link high-impact litigation with strategic communications and the strength of our partnerships to combat these abusive and discriminatory systems and achieve social and economic justice. For more information, visit www.publicjustice.net