The Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services is reinstating a near-complete ban on individuals altering their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity.
In 2022, the state’s health department adopted an administrative rule barring residents from changing their birth certificates with limited exceptions. However, this rule was blocked by the court after the ACLU of Montana brought litigation challenging the rule. In June 2023, the trial court granted summary judgment in the ACLU’s favor, permanently enjoining enforcement of the rule. The Judge even held the health department in contempt of court for advancing anti-transgender administrative regulations prior to the resolution of a related lawsuit.
Although the court permanently prohibited the administrative rule, the state health department was then allowed to once again write administrative guidelines regarding gender marker changes on birth certificates.
Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU of Montana, told the Montana Free Press, “We’ll be back in court, no doubt.” Rate said that the new administrative rule relies on the same unconstitutional provisions as the one previously enjoined by the courts, and that the ACLU is planning to bring a legal challenge to the new rule in the coming weeks. “The new rule runs afoul of the same constitutional provisions, from dignity to privacy to equal protection,” Rate went on.
The state health department has asserted that despite this anti-trans rule being a new iteration of one that is years old, it aligns with an anti-trans statute passed in 2023. That statute, Senate Bill 458, defined sex so narrowly that experts said that it could exclude transgender individuals from protections under anti-discrimination laws. Republican Sen. Carl Glimm, the same legislator who introduced the original bill to restrict birth certificates in 2021, also sponsored Senate Bill 458. The ACLU of Montana brought a legal challenge to Senate Bill 458 in December 2023, but the law has not yet been enjoined by the courts.
Montana is rated as one of the worst states for transgender people on the legislative risk assessment map created by transgender journalist Erin Reed. In addition to legally erasing transgender people, which effectively removes any legal rights associated with their gender identities, Montana also has a gender-affirming care ban in place and has a ‘negative’ LGBTQ policy tally, according to the Movement Advancement Project (MAP). In April 2023, the state’s first openly transgender legislator, Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D), was censured following her vocal opposition to the slew of anti-LGBTQ bills introduced by her Republican colleagues.
“Once again, this latest action by the [health department] betrays the state’s deep and abiding animus towards trans people in Montana,” Rate said. “Trans people belong here. They are trying to live out their ordinary lives.”
Montana is one of 17 states that make it difficult, if not impossible, to amend gender markers on a person’s birth certificate and one of 23 states that bans best-practice medical care for transgender youth. In 2023, 510 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in legislatures across the country, eight of which were introduced in Montana. This legislative session has already seen the introduction of 442 anti-LGBTQ bills, outpacing the anti-LGBTQ activity seen in 2023 that warranted the Human Rights Campaign to issue a national state of emergency for LGBTQ Americans.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy