HELENA, Mont. >> Attorneys for Republican officials pressed Montana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday to overturn a landmark climate ruling that said the state was violating residents’ constitutional right to a clean environment by allowing oil, gas and coal projects without regard for global warming.

Last year’s ruling by a state district judge was considered a breakthrough in attempts by young environmentalists and their attorneys to use courts to leverage action on climate change. It must be upheld by the state’s high court to set lasting legal precedent.

Attorneys for officials including Gov. Greg Gianforte told justices Wednesday that climate change is too broad for the courts to fix. They said greenhouse gases from Montana are miniscule on a global scale, and they noted that state law prohibits the denial of fossil-fuel projects based on carbon dioxide emissions.

“Global climate change is a complex issue that can’t be solved by a judicial decision,” state attorney Dale Schowengerdt said.

Instead, the state argued, the plaintiffs — who range in age from 6 to 23 — should be challenging individual permits as they’re issued.

“This is an evasion of responsibility,” plaintiff Grace Gibson-Snyder, 20, said after the hearing. “It’s an evasion of your constitutional obligation to protect our rights and our state. Why would you not try?”

The seven justices took the case under advisement. A decision could take weeks or months. It will almost certainly be final since the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to wade into the state laws at issue, said professor David Dana of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

If the lower court ruling stands, it could nudge fossil fuel-friendly Montana to adopt policies more protective to the environment and potentially influence future climate litigation in other states such as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and New York, which like Montana have state constitutional protections for the environment.

“The bottom line is whatever the state Supreme Court decides, it’s more likely to have an influence” than last year’s lower court ruling, said Syracuse University professor David Driesen, an expert on environmental law. “Other states that have those provisions will consider it. They don’t have to follow it.”

Officials in Hawaii who faced a similar lawsuit from young environmentalists recently agreed to a settlement that includes an ambitious requirement to decarbonize the state’s transportation system over the next 21 years. And in April, Europe’s highest human rights court ruled that countries must better protect their people from the consequences of climate change, siding with a group of older Swiss women against their government in a ruling with potential implications across the continent.

Those cases and the Montana lawsuit have resulted in a small number of rulings establishing a government duty to protect citizens from climate change.