Six Generations. One Promise Still Worth Fighting For.

Grace speaking at a press conference after a hearing at the Montana Supreme Court in 2024. Photo by Robin Loznak.

June 24, 2026

By Grace Gibson-Snyder  

I am the sixth generation of my family to call Montana home.   

My great great great grandma came to Montana on a wagon in 1866, and my family has been in Montana ever since. From my family, I’ve learned to love this place and become aware of our human connection to the land.   

Protecting the environment, protecting our home, is a Montanan value that has never lost its strength. The belief that nature belongs to all of us is ingrained in our hearts, our communities, and even our state constitution. Preserving nature has never been a political issue: it’s always been a common value among Montanans regardless of party.  

Montanans are also stubborn. We want to have a choice about what our lives look like. And, in America, we have the opportunity to make these choices.  

That is the promise our national founders made 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence: that we would each have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   

And yet, human-caused environmental changes are preventing people from living the life they choose. My co-plaintiff Micah has had to suspend his running schedule because of wildfire smoke. Ranchers, like my fellow plaintiff Rikki, are struggling to sustain their livelihood because the cattle are dying of heat and drought.   

America’s founding promises, in theory, should grant us the ability to pursue the life we want, to make our own individual decisions each day.  

But no individual is choosing to suffer from the climate crisis. And no individual alone can clean their air or stop the continual heating of our nation. 

I didn’t have a say in those policies that prioritize the fossil fuel industry. I can’t control when wildfire smoke makes going outside a health risk, or that the glaciers are shrinking every year. But I can’t sit back and watch my home disappear before my eyes.  

So I turned to the courts.   

I was a plaintiff in Held v. Montana, where young Montanans proved in court that we have a constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, including a stable climate. We won. The court agreed: Montana cannot ignore our constitutional rights when its decisions fuel the climate crisis.  

But winning wasn't the end. When the state passed new laws specifically designed to get around that ruling, we went back to court. That case, Held v. Montana II, is ongoing. We're asking the court to enforce the win we already earned and stop the state from rolling back our rights.  

I'm also one of 22 youth plaintiffs in Lighthiser v. Trump, challenging the federal executive orders that are unleashing fossil fuels and suppressing climate science nationwide. In June, an appeals court dismissed our case on procedural grounds, without ever disputing that the harms we suffer are real. We are not giving up and will ask the full court of appeals to rehear our case.  

Grace (right) and her fellow Lighthiser v. Trump youth plaintiff, Ula (left), heading to court in Missoula, Montana, in 2025. Photo by Eillin Delapaz-Aceves.

These three lawsuits defend the nation’s promise, enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. The Constitution gave us the right to enforce this promise. And whether we're winning, defending a win, or facing a setback, that's exactly what my fellow plaintiffs and I are doing every single day.  

Defending life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness / our governing Constitutions and a 250-year-old Declaration of our rights in court has been the most patriotic thing I’ve ever done.  

The promise has always existed on paper. Yet it has not always been equally distributed, and the fight to extend it to all people has driven every chapter of American progress. From the civil rights movement to women’s suffrage and beyond, people fought to demonstrate to the government that it was breaking its own promise to certain people and groups. Through struggle and setbacks we The People, through our civic participation in democracy, chose to make these things right and better realize the promises of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness for all people. 

But upholding this promise requires going back to court again and again, back to the streets and back to the polls, to make sure the government actually follows through. Because our nation’s founders knew one thing for certain—unchecked power will be abused and become corrupted, and a government for and by the people only works if The People show up.   

We cannot have life if we cannot breathe.  

We cannot have liberty if wildfire smoke traps us in our homes.  

We cannot pursue happiness if one of the greatest and inherent gifts of life—nature—is destroyed in the name of profit. 

I am building on the shoulders of people who have been working to secure American rights for decades, for generations, for centuries. But it’s not just my work. It’s not just my fellow plaintiffs or our legal team or climate advocates. It’s all of us. Fighting climate change is a collective imagining of what we want our society to be.  

Six generations of my family have called this place home. I want there to be a seventh, an eighth, with the same rivers, the same mountains, and a government that honors the promise made to them.  

This Fourth of July, as we mark 250 years since that promise was first written down, I'm asking you to help make sure it's kept. Not just for families like mine, but for every young person whose future depends on a livable climate, and for every American who deserves a government that honors its word.