HELENA — On Friday morning, the House Judiciary Committee heard more than three hours of testimony on a bill that would require transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex at birth. Supporters said it was intended to protect single-sex spaces, particularly for women, while opponents called it discriminatory.

House Bill 121 is sponsored by Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, R-Billings. It would require public schools, correctional facilities, other public buildings and domestic violence shelters to designate bathrooms, changing rooms and sleeping areas for either men or women, based on their biological sex at birth, and to “take reasonable steps” to keep the opposite sex out. Someone could then sue those facilities if they failed to take those steps and someone of the opposite sex used the space.

The bill wouldn’t apply to rooms that only one person can use at a time.

Seekins-Crowe denied that HB 121 was discriminating against anyone. She said women in these spaces are particularly vulnerable, and that the bill was intended to protect them from violence and harassment. She said it was a major issue for voters she spoke to during the last campaign.

“This is not targeting a certain population, this is protecting a certain population,” she said.

Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras also testified in support. She tied HB 121 to several other pieces of legislation that the Gianforte administration has supported in previous sessions: 2023’s Senate Bill 99, which prohibited gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, and Senate Bill 458, which codified a definition of biological sex into state law, as well as 2021’s House Bill 112, which restricted transgender female athletes from competing in girls’ sports.

“Acknowledging biological realities should not be complicated or controversial, and neither should this bill,” Juras said. “Working with the Legislature, the governor’s office has been proud of our shared record of defending Montanans from the far left’s ideological crusade that has swept the nation.”

Opponents argued the bill’s supporters were overstating the danger to women from transgender people, and that laws already exist to address the kind of behavior they’re concerned about. They said there was no way to enforce this requirement without intruding on Montanans’ privacy.

“How is the state expected to prevent me from using the men’s bathroom?” said Shawn Reagor, a transgender man representing the Montana Gender Alliance. “How is the state expected to know that I should be using the women’s bathroom and require me to do so? It doesn’t make any sense.”

Other opponents raised concerns that implementing the bill would be too burdensome, particularly on local governments and shelters. They questioned what these facilities would be required to do and what kind of legal liability they could face.

Kim Patterson, development director for the Friendship Center in Helena, said their organization receives hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal funding, including through the Family Violence Prevention and Services Program. She said they’re concerned complying with HB 121 might put that at risk.

“All of this funding prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,” she said. “We are already under-resourced, and the loss of this funding would be detrimental to the people who rely on our lifesaving services.”

Rep. SJ Howell, D-Missoula, asked Seekins-Crowe about how the bill would be implemented, citing a hypothetical example of an encounter in a bathroom at a public library.

“They don’t have a name, they don’t have an address, they certainly haven’t seen a birth certificate – I’m hoping they haven’t seen anything else private about that person – they file a suit,” Howell said. “How are you envisioning that the librarian in this instance would clarify their liability? Are you thinking cameras in the bathroom, guards at all times, checks at the door?”

Seekins-Crowe said she believed public facilities are already making accommodations and that the impact will not be as large as opponents believe.

“This bill is not for us to invade privacy – and that does include women’s privacy at this point,” she said. “The purpose of this bill is to protect women in private spaces. And it’s not about checking. I think it really is going to also go to the comfort level of that person.”

The House Judiciary Committee took no immediate action on HB 121 Friday.

In his recent inaugural speech, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte spoke about how we have what the rest of the nation wants, saying: “The American dream lives in Montana and it’s here where we are proving what is possible when the government gets out of the way and empowers the people.”

If anything, his words reflect a relative newcomer’s poor understanding of Montana history — and what can happen when you “get government out of the way.”  But long-time Montanans remember.  We lived through and still suffer from the era when government was indeed “out of the way” and the rapacious appetites of the railroad, cattle, timber and mining barons ran rampant, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. 

The record is clear, and while many scars yet remain, the benefits of regulating formerly unrestricted greed and destruction are evident all across this vast state.  

Anyone who knew those who lived in Montana 100 years ago can easily recall their stories of hunters basically wiping out the wildlife populations.  The most distinct example of human-caused destruction of wildlife was the decimation of the buffalo that once wandered our plains in the millions.  

But the slaughter was stopped — not by individuals, but by the government.  While buffalo continue to recover, Montana now boasts healthy populations of deer, elk, antelope and moose — all of which would have been hunted to extirpation were it not for the institution of regulations to prevent their demise.  

Hunting seasons were established to protect the time when existing wildlife carried the next generation to replenish the herds.  Regulatory limits on how many animals one individual could kill were instituted not to crush freedom, as the governor insinuated government has done, but to provide continuing opportunities for Montanans and generations yet to come. 

While our clean rivers and abundant fisheries are the envy of the nation, that’s not by accident.  Plenty of Montanans still remember when the Clark Fork was a dead river that ran red with mining and smelting wastes, which we will continue to wrestle with for decades to come.  

The timber barons ran huge rafts of logs down the Blackfoot, destroying the banks and scouring the riverbed on their way to the mills and leaving behind clearcuts leaching sediment into once-healthy tributaries.  Half a century later, the Blackfoot was again decimated when the Mike Horse mine tailings pond failed, flooding the river with toxic metals that wiped out the fishery.

And of course not all that long ago there was no such thing as the catch-and-release fishing ethic pioneered and promoted by iconic conservationists like Bud Lilly, who would willingly tell friends that in his youth it was “catch and release in bacon grease.”

While the governor lauds “unleashing freedom,” the undeniable reality of Montana’s past is that there must be sidebars on that “freedom” because there are those who will pillage the state’s wealth to get it while they can with no concern for the consequences.

The legislature’s GOP leaders, echoing the governor, have the regulatory laws that restored past damages and now protect Montanans and their environment in their crosshairs.  But laws such as the Montana Environmental Policy Act protect all Montanans — and rest assured Republicans need clean air, water, and soil, too, as well as healthy populations of fish and wildlife.

Montanans continue to suffer from past deregulatory mistakes, which took our electricity rates from the lowest in the region to the highest.  The lesson?  Beware “unleashing freedom” if the result is actually unleashing rapacious corporations to once again plunder and pollute this great state. 

HELENA — Four days into the Montana Legislature’s 69^th session, a split in the majority Republican party is lingering.

Senate leadership spent much of Thursday trying to get their caucus to unite behind a new rules package, but in the end, it was a group of nine Republicans voting alongside Democrats to keep temporary rules in place – just as they did on Monday.

Just after the start of the session, 27 of 50 senators voted to change the proposed initial rules the session would operate under. The biggest changes dealt with senators’ assignments to committees – the smaller groups that hear and debate bills on specific topics.

The first rules proposal, recommended by the Senate Rules Committee last month, had created a new “Executive Branch Review Committee,” which leaders said would handle legislation from the governor’s office and other state agencies. However, Democrats and Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton – the Republican named to chair the committee – questioned whether it was necessary. The revised temporary rules greatly limited what the Executive Branch Review Committee would take on and reassigned its members to other influential committees.

On Wednesday, GOP-led committees sought to address the holdouts’ concerns. The Senate Rules Committee amended the permanent rules proposal to eliminate the Executive Review Committee entirely, and the Senate Committee on Committees – which recommends committee assignments – proposed new assignments similar, but not identical, to the ones in the temporary rules.

The Senate was scheduled to vote on the rules resolution at 1 p.m. Thursday. When the Senate convened, Republicans broke off into what became a highly charged caucus meeting.

Jonathon Ambarian

Senate President Sen. Matt Regier, R-Kalispell, and Majority Leader Sen. Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, urged their members to support the new rules proposal. They said they had heard what Regier called “angst” about the new committee, and that the changes should have addressed that issue.

“We gave you everything you asked for – what do you want?” said Sen. Barry Usher, R-Yellowstone County. “If we go out there again and we continue to fight over these rules, the Republican Party will be hurt.”

Sen. Becky Beard, R-Elliston, said the Republican split had distracted senators from their work.

“We have frittered away now four days dealing with this, when we should be serving the state of Montana and our voters,” she said. “This is not getting to the goal.”

Jonathon Ambarian

Holdout Republican senators said they felt some members hadn’t been treated fairly when committees were assigned. Sen. Wendy McKamey, R-Great Falls, was critical of the Executive Review Committee.

“It was, someone said, a parking place for people, to kind of keep them out of the way,” she said. “I don’t know whether it was or whether it wasn’t; what I do know is it was kind of an affront to the governor. I do not want to see us fighting the governor, I want to see us making good legislation, I want to see us getting to work, I want to see us getting stuff done.”

Conservative groups like the Montana Freedom Caucus sharply criticized the nine Republicans who broke with their party on the rules, accusing them of essentially handing power in the chamber to Democrats. Sen. Denley Loge, R-St. Regis, one of the holdouts, defended himself in the Thursday caucus, saying he had acted independently, not joined with Democrats.

“I’m the kind of person that if I got treated fairly, I still want to watch out for the ones that didn’t,” he said. “And so that’s why I’ve been in on this, as one of the ‘dirty nine,’ I guess you want to say, but I am a Republican.”

McGillvray responded to Loge.

“You’re not ‘dirty nine,’” he said. “You are a Republican.”

Regier ended the caucus meeting with a final appeal for unity.

“My resolve is to never stop fighting for the 32 of you,” he said. “I will not let the Democrat minority run the floor – that is my line.”

After the meeting, leaders delayed the vote, saying they planned to return to negotiations, including potentially further updating the committee assignments to satisfy the holdouts. However, the Committee on Committees was set to meet at 3 p.m., recessed until 5 p.m., and then chair Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, announced they would adjourn without considering new assignments.

The Senate then returned to the floor at 6 p.m. Without debate, they voted down the rules resolution – again on a 27-23 vote, including the same nine Republicans.

“I’m going to keep pushing forward with what Montanans have sent us here to do,” Regier told reporters after the vote. “I would love it if those nine would join the caucus that they ran on, that they won in and stop this procedure.”

John Riley

Regier said the Senate has to move forward with its work, and committee meetings will be getting underway. MTN asked him if the chamber’s business would be getting back to normal.

“We’re going to get back to business, but it won’t be as normal,” he said. “Fifteen minutes into the entire legislative session, to have a vote like we did on Monday, like I said, that really jars the confidence from the rest of your peers in your caucus.”

Friday will be the fifth day of the legislative session, with 85 still to go.