Montana
ACLU Montana: Stop health department, DOJ from harm to transgender people • Daily Montanan
People who are transgender need to be able to amend their birth certificates and driver’s licenses without interference from the state of Montana, plaintiffs in a lawsuit argued this week in a request for a preliminary injunction.
So the Lewis and Clark County District Court should block the Department of Public Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice from unconstitutionally preventing them, the plaintiffs said.
The status quo not only violates the constitutional rights of transgender Montanans, it causes harm, said the motion filed Thursday.
“Uncorrected identity documents serve as constant reminders that one’s identity is perceived by society and the government as ‘illegitimate,’” said the ACLU Montana in the filing.
The result can exacerbate gender dysphoria — a serious medical condition associated with incongruity between assigned sex and gender identity — and cause psychiatric disorders and even the risk of suicide, the plaintiffs said.
On the other hand, The World Professional Association for Transgender Health states that “changing the sex designation on identity documents greatly helps alleviate gender dysphoria,” the filing said.
Last month, the ACLU Montana filed a lawsuit on behalf of Jessica Kalarchik, Jane Doe, and “all others similarly situated” alleging Gov. Greg Gianforte, the Department of Public Health and Human Services, and the Department of Justice are violating the constitutional rights of transgender people.
The plaintiffs argue people who are transgender used to be able to amend their birth certificates without issue and without negative consequences to the state.
However, a 2022 rule through the health department, a new Motor Vehicle Department practice through the DOJ, and Senate Bill 458 treat them differently than cisgender people — whose gender identity corresponds to their assigned sex — and infringes on their rights.
“The 2022 Rule, the new MVD policy and practice, and SB 458 are solutions in search of a problem,” the plaintiffs said.
A spokesperson for Gianforte earlier said the governor stands by the bill he signed in 2023 “that brings the long-recognized, commonsense, immutable biologically-based definition of sex — male and female — into our state laws.”
The state health department earlier said it does not typically comment on pending litigation. The Department of Justice earlier denied the MVD had changed its policy on updating a sex designation on a driver’s license.
This week, the plaintiffs asked the court for a preliminary injunction to stop enforcement of the rule, practice and law, citing infringement of their constitutionally protected rights.
They also asked the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action on behalf of all Montanans who are transgender and need to change their birth certificates and driver’s licenses.
The American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of New York and Nixon Peabody of Chicago also are representing plaintiffs, pending approval from the court.
DPHHS Director Charlie Brereton and Attorney General Austin Knudsen also are sued as heads of state agencies.
Different law, same fight
Starting in 2017, people who were transgender could change their sex designations by submitting an affidavit to the health department.
In 2021, the Montana Legislature adopted Senate Bill 280, which restricted the ability of people who are transgender to change their birth certificates. But in a separate lawsuit, the court temporarily halted the law and ordered the health department to use the 2017 process instead.
“DPHHS pointed to no adverse consequence of having had to revert to the 2017 procedure,” said the filing this week.
The district court permanently enjoined SB 280 in 2023 and also found DPHHS to be in contempt for “openly and repeatedly defying” its order.
In February 2024, however, the state health department said it wouldn’t amend birth certificates based on gender identity, but only to correct errors, citing an administrative rule from 2022 and its alignment with Senate Bill 458.
Signed by Gianforte in 2023, SB 458 states that “there are exactly two sexes, male and female … (and) the sexes are determined … without regard to an individual’s psychological, behavioral, social, chosen or subjective experience of gender.”
The DOJ took action this year as well, ending the prior practice at the MVD of allowing changes to sex based on a letter from a doctor stating the person was changing or had changed their gender, according to the court filing.
“Instead, without following any notice-and-comment procedure, the DOJ and Attorney General Austin Knudsen adopted a new policy and practice that the MVD would only issue an amended driver’s license with a sex designation consistent with a person’s gender identity, rather than their assigned sex at birth, if the person provided an amended birth certificate — which the 2022 Rule prohibits transgender people from obtaining,” said the filing.
Constitutional rights violated, plaintiffs allege
The plaintiffs argue the changes violate multiple constitutional rights.
They violate their right to equal protection because the health department and MVD “single out transgender people for different and less favorable treatment vis-a-vis cisgender people,” the filing said.
The rule and practice also don’t serve a compelling state interest, the plaintiffs said.
In fact, 45 other states allow transgender people to amend their sex markers on their birth certificates, and 38 allow them to change the same on their driver’s licenses without an amended birth certificate, the filing said.
“Many of these states have allowed these changes to birth certificates and driver’s licenses for years without any widespread problems with the ability of those states to maintain ‘accurate vital statistics,’” the filing said.
They noted Montana was in the same boat earlier, making changes at the health department “without incident” from 2017 until the 2021 law was adopted.
The plaintiffs also argue that the rule, MVD practice and law violate the right to privacy, which the Montana Constitution says is “essential to the well-being of a free society.”
The state says that right shall not be infringed without a compelling state interest,” and the plaintiffs note the state affords even broader privacy protections than the federal constitution.
And they said health information is personal, sensitive and private.
“The mental and emotional toll of being forced, against one’s will, to publicly share personal information related to one’s transgender status is both humiliating and degrading,” the plaintiffs said.
If transgender people can’t change their birth certificates, they’re forced to reveal their transgender status every time they’re required to show those documents, the plaintiffs said.
“This forced ‘outing’ has serious adverse psychological effects and health consequences and often results in outright hostility toward transgender people,” said the court filing.
“Conversely, transgender people whose identity documents are consistent with the way they present themselves to the public experience better mental health and less mistreatment.”
The plaintiffs cited a study that said transgender people who changed their sex designation on documents were 35% less likely to have experienced related mistreatment than those who hadn’t made the changes.
“Other studies have shown that accurate identity documents promote economic benefits, including higher rates of employment and increased income,” the plaintiffs said.
They noted nearly one-third of transender people fall below the poverty line and the same number have experienced homelessness.
The state also is forcing people who are transgender to “express or embrace a viewpoint to which they disagree,” in violation of the right to be free from compelled speech, the plaintiffs allege.
Rather, transgender people are forced to carry and present identity documents with a sex designation that conflicts with what they know their sex to be and one that forces them to “disseminate the state’s view of their sex,” the plaintiffs argue.
The rule, policy and law are also “scientifically incorrect,” said the court filing.
“They ignore the existence of multiple genes involved in sex differentiation; the breadth of the endocrine system, which has multiple organs with multiple functions; and growing research documenting that gender identity is biologically based,” the plaintiffs said.
Class certification request
The plaintiffs also propose a class that includes all transgender people in Montana who want to change sex designations on their birth certificates or driver’s licenses.
Citing a study, the filing estimates roughly 0.41% of Montanans over 18 identify as transgender, or more than 3,400, and an estimated 49% don’t have documents that reflect the sex to which they identify, or some 1,700.
It said a class action case would account for the high number of potential plaintiffs, their geographic dispersion in a state such as Montana, the resources of the court, the resources of individual class members, and their vulnerability to threats of violence.
“Proceeding as a class diminishes the salience of such threats to any individual class member, as there is both safety in numbers and relative anonymity for class members,” said the request for class certification.
Kalarchik, prelim injunction Kalarchik, class certification
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With the federal judiciary increasingly hostile toward the battle against climate change, environmental litigators have turned to state courts for progress. They scored a major victory on Wednesday when the Montana Supreme Court issued a landmark decision holding that the state constitution protects residents against climate change. On this week’s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discuss the case and its consequences for other climate-curious state supreme courts. A preview of their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Dahlia Lithwick: This week, the Montana Supreme Court boldly went where we keep hoping state supreme courts will go.
Mark Joseph Stern: It all started with a provision of the state constitution that guarantees the right “to a clean and healthful environment” and requires the state “to maintain and improve” that environment “for present and future generations.” Citing this language, the Montana Supreme Court, by a 6–1 vote, held that the state constitution limits the government’s ability to exacerbate climate change. The court discussed the obvious and undeniable reality of climate change, not just globally but in Montana. Refreshingly, it began the opinion with facts about how climate change is ravaging Montana and threatens everybody’s way of life.
Then the court declared that the plaintiffs in this case, a group of young people, could bring this suit and hold the government to its constitutional obligation to protect the environment for future generations. It explained that this obligation is about not just preventing oil spills and other disasters but also limiting carbon emissions so that everyone can enjoy a clean Montana for hundreds of years to come.
If we’ve learned anything about environmental law, it’s that nothing stops or starts within the confines of a state. So while this sounds like an incredibly cool and lofty win, it also sounds like an abstraction, right? Does this actually change anything on the ground in Montana?
It does, and that’s what’s so extraordinary about the opinion to me. Montana Republicans enacted a statute that prohibited the state from considering greenhouse gas emissions when permitting energy projects. The state government essentially said that agencies could not consider the effect of fossil fuels when allowing fossil-fuel projects to move forward. And the court actually struck down that statute, requiring the government to once again consider greenhouse gas emissions when permitting projects. It’s laying the groundwork to limit permits in the future that exacerbate climate change.
That takes this case outside the realm of abstraction and moves it into a much more concrete area. The courts really do have the power to examine a statute or a permit and say, No, this is repugnant to the constitution and must be set aside. They can do the direct work of limiting the devastating impact of fossil-fuel projects today and in the future.
I want to talk for a minute about the question of standing, which is a persistent problem in climate litigation. Lawsuits fall apart on standing because the courts seem to believe that nobody is personally injured by environmental catastrophes that harm absolutely everybody. How did the Montana Supreme Court get around that problem?
The state, in fighting this lawsuit, did argue that climate change affects everyone, so the plaintiffs here did not have a “particularized” injury that gave them the right to sue. The Montana Supreme Court shut that down. It held that because climate change affects everyone in some way, these individual plaintiffs aren’t unharmed. Quite the opposite: It illustrates that these plaintiffs clearly do have real grievances, that their future in Montana is jeopardized, and they should be able to vindicate a constitutional guarantee that applies to each and every person under the state’s foundational law.
Here, the state Supreme Court departed a bit from the U.S. Supreme Court’s standing doctrine—and properly so, because the Montana Constitution provides broader access to the state’s courts than the U.S. Constitution provides to federal courts. Here, the majority refused to turn a provision so central to the Montana Constitution into a nullity just because climate change happens to affect the whole world. We know that it’s affecting Montana in a heightened way. We know that the plaintiffs’ future is imperiled by the acceleration of climate change. And the court said that’s enough for them to come into state court and challenge a law that will exacerbate Montana’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Some of the actual drafters of the Montana Constitution are still alive, right? And they were able to say that this was indeed the intent of their work?
Yes, that’s absolutely right. The current Montana Constitution was enacted in 1972, so there’s a very clear record of what the delegates wanted. And some of those delegates are still alive and have made it abundantly clear that at the time they wanted the strongest, most all-encompassing environmental protections in the nation. The delegates labored over this language to ensure that it would be the strongest found in any state constitution and rejected language that might limit it. Their protections were designed to be, as the court put it, “anticipatory and preventative” for both “present and future generations.”
Why? Because for decades, big corporations had destroyed Montana’s environment. They had harvested all these resources from the state without concern for the lives of residents. And in 1972, the delegates said: enough. They saw that their state was being ravaged by corporations, and they decided to make it a fundamental guarantee that any Montanan could walk into court and vindicate their right to a clean environment. And that is what happened in this decision.
One last thought: Is this utterly Montana-specific, to this one Supreme Court, or is this scalable and replicable across the country?
It is scalable. Montana isn’t alone here: Hawaii also has a state constitutional provision that guarantees the right to a “clean and healthful environment,” and its Supreme Court has vindicated that guarantee, holding that it includes the right to a stable climate system. It will continue to be a watchdog on this. Of course, the Hawaii Supreme Court is one of the most progressive in the country, but these provisions exist in the constitutions of five other states: Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Rhode Island.
I think there is so much potential—especially in a state like Pennsylvania, which has a lot of dirty-energy projects going on—for the state judiciary to impose some limits on a corporation’s ability to destroy the environment. All these states have left-leaning supreme courts. And I hope they will be emboldened and inspired by what happened in Montana to take action here and vindicate residents’ right to an environment that not just is free of litter and toxic materials but can endure for centuries into the future. That means taking climate change into account and imposing limitations on a state’s ability to exacerbate it.
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Much of the country continues to see big declines in drug overdose deaths, but deaths in Montana were virtually unchanged.
Between July 2023 and 2024, the number of overdose deaths nationwide fell nearly 20%. That’s according to preliminary data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
North Carolina’s deaths were nearly cut in half. Many states saw decreases between 10 and nearly 30%. But Montana’s death rate fell by half a percentage point.
It’s unclear why death rates from drugs like fentanyl are falling so fast in parts of the country but are steady in Montana.Public health experts are debating whether it’s more access to treatment, disruptions to Mexican cartels’ chemical supplies from China or several other factors.
While Montana’s death rate didn’t change much in the latest round of federal data, it has been slowly trending downward since its peak in 2022.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big. Here’s a look at Dec. 19, 2024, results for each game:
Winning Lucky For Life numbers from Dec. 19 drawing
02-05-13-18-29, Lucky Ball: 16
Check Lucky For Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from Dec. 19 drawing
14-20-22-24, Bonus: 02
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9:00 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9:00 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8:00 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
Winning lottery numbers are sponsored by Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network.
Where can you buy lottery tickets?
Tickets can be purchased in person at gas stations, convenience stores and grocery stores. Some airport terminals may also sell lottery tickets.
You can also order tickets online through Jackpocket, the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network, in these U.S. states and territories: Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Texas, Washington, D.C., and West Virginia. The Jackpocket app allows you to pick your lottery game and numbers, place your order, see your ticket and collect your winnings all using your phone or home computer.
Jackpocket is the official digital lottery courier of the USA TODAY Network. Gannett may earn revenue for audience referrals to Jackpocket services. GAMBLING PROBLEM? CALL 1-800-GAMBLER, Call 877-8-HOPENY/text HOPENY (467369) (NY). 18+ (19+ in NE, 21+ in AZ). Physically present where Jackpocket operates. Jackpocket is not affiliated with any State Lottery. Eligibility Restrictions apply. Void where prohibited. Terms: jackpocket.com/tos.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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