A professor’s advice set Mae Nan (Robinson) Ellingson on a path that led to elective office, public service, law school and life-long support for Montana’s 1972 Constitution and Montanans’ right to a clean and healthful environment.

Montanans voted in 1970 for a Constitutional Convention, known as the ConCon. UM Professor Ellis Waldron persuaded Mae Nan to run for election as one of 100 delegates. Mae Nan became the youngest delegate and one of nineteen women.

In December 1971, while helping plan the ConCon, Mae Nan got word that her mother was dying. After her mother’s death, she brought her 9-year-old brother and 12-year-old sister to Missoula to raise them while finishing her graduate degree and serving in the ConCon.

Mae Nan and delegate Bob Campbell are credited with drafting the 1972 Constitution eloquent preamble: “We the people of Montana grateful to God for the quiet beauty of our state, the grandeur of our mountains, the vastness of our rolling plains, and desiring to improve the quality of life, equality of opportunity and to secure the blessings of liberty for this and future generations do ordain and establish this constitution.”

The preamble’s poetry foreshadows the rights codified in Article II, Section 3, including “the right to a clean and healthful environment,” an explicit right affirmed in only six State Constitutions.

Named one of “Ten Outstanding Constitutional Convention Delegates,” Mae Nan joined other delegates traveling across Montana to promote passage of the Constitution.

Although her fellow delegates encouraged Mae Nan to attend law school, she became a teacher so she could support her younger siblings. Then a fellow delegate paid Mae Nan’s tuition at the UM Law School, where she graduated with honors.

While Mae Nan was working for the Missoula City Attorney’s office (1977 to 1983), the city passed its first Open Space Bond, which funded a Mount Sentinel conservation easement and construction of the Clark Fork Riverfront Trail. Working with the state and various agencies, Mae Nan helped develop bond programs leveraged by the coal severance tax trust fund providing water and sewer systems for local governments, irrigation systems for farmers and ranchers, health care facilities, and economic development projects. Mae Nan retired in 2012 but has remained active in public discourse.

The Constitution’s 50th anniversary was in 2022. Mae Nan spoke across the State on the importance of citizen support for the State’s guiding document. A year later, Mae Nan was the lead witness in the nation’s first constitutional climate change lawsuit to reach trial, Held v. Montana. The plaintiffs were 16 Montanan youths from 2 to 18 years old when the case was filed. A District Court Judge ruled that Montana laws limiting consideration of environmental factors when deciding oil and gas permits violated the Constitutional right to a safe environment, and the Montana Supreme Court upheld that

decision.

In 2023, The University of Montana awarded Mae Nan an honorary doctorate. “Few Montanans have accomplished as much public good for our state as Mae Nan Ellingson,” said UM President Seth Bodnar.

By Bert Lindler