Montana lawmakers violated young people’s rights – and the state constitution – by ignoring fossil fuels’ impact on the climate, a judge ruled Monday.

In her decision supporting 16 young plaintiffs in Held v. Montana ­– the first constitutional climate case to be tried in the United States ­– District Judge Kathy Seeley wrote that fossil fuel extraction and use within the state was clearly tied to global climate change. She also found that young people have a particular standing to demand changes, since they will be disproportionately and negatively impacted by a rapidly heating planet. The decision has broad implications for environmental action across the country and, potentially, the world.

“It’s one of the strongest decisions on climate change ever issued,” says Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University’s law school, which keeps a database of the more than 2,000 climate lawsuits that have been filed globally.