Montana
Montana Republican's bill would charge parents of trans kids with child abuse
For the fifth time in three years, Montana State Senator John Fuller has introduced legislation targeting transgender youth. The State Supreme Court overturned a similar law sponsored by Fuller in 2023; its renewed form may indicate the GOP’s plans for reconstructing Montana’s judiciary branch in favor of conservatism.Other prior iterations of the bill simply failed to pass. Now, he’s got his eyes set on a new target: parents of transgender kids.
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Introduced on Wednesday, January 22, Senate Bill 164 would criminalize gender-affirming care—such as surgeries, puberty blockers, and hormone replacement therapy—for trans patients younger than 16 years old under child abuse statutes.
“Every major medical association in America endorses the provision of this type of care,” the ACLU of Montana’s executive director Akilah Deernose said. “This bill would mandate government overreach into private decisions that should remain between families and their treating care physician.”
Fuller, the bill’s sponsor, has a lengthy track record of trying—and failing—to enact anti-trans laws. In 2021, as a member of the Montana House, he introduced two separate bills targeting medical practitioners providing gender-affirming care for trans people, neither of which ever made it out of the legislature. He was also the architect of a ban on trans women in sports (trans men were not mentioned) that the Montana Supreme Court in part overturned in 2022.
Fuller’s 2023 version of the youth health care bill passed in the state’s House and Senate. Republican Governor Greg Gianforte signed it into law, only for state courts to deem this, too, “unconstitutional”—citing Montanans’ right to privacy.
This time, instead of a flat-out ban, Fuller’s bill reclassifies medical treatments for trans young people under Montana child abuse statutes. It specifically targets treatments “altering the appearance” of a child that seek to “affirm[. . .] the child’s perception of the child’s sex when the appearance or perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.” It would fall under Montana child abuse statutes.
If the bill becomes law, Montana would be the first state in the country to explicitly criminalize parents simply for allowing a child access to gender-affirming procedures and hormone therapy.
Half of all states have already passed legal restrictions on health care for trans youth. The Oklahoma state legislature considered, but ultimately did not pass, a similar bill criminalizing parents of trans kids in 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott also issued a directive requiring state social services to investigate parents who let their trans children access gender-affirming treatments — however, like that of many states targeting this kind of care, the policy was blocked by the courts for violating the constitutional rights of trans people and their families.
Unlike Montana Senate Bill 164, Texas’s directive did not outright criminalize parents who support trans kids; it required an investigation, but not necessarily punishment. The only policies that have withstood the test of the judiciary thus far have targeted health care providers and state funds rather than parents, and they hang in the balance of an ongoing SCOTUS case. If Montana’s bill is passed, it could lay the groundwork for a dangerous legal precedent.
Studies have also shown that anti-trans health laws can create a medical chilling effect, impeding health care for people of all gender identities, as doctors could restrict or deny care if they even suspect a young person is or could eventually identify as trans.
Including Fuller’s proposals, Montana faced at least 10 anti-LGBTQ bills in 2023 alone. Hundreds of anti-trans bills at the state and national levels have been introduced or gained headway since then.
Fuller’s latest attempt to implement this policy in spite of the Supreme Court’s decision is more than just political theater. In addition to attacking trans kids’ access to health care, a Fuller-led coalition of Montana Republicans has set its sights on the judiciary branch. Legislators have proposed an onslaught of bills to constrict, discredit, and declaw the courts, limiting its scope and capacity for judicial review—including several bills introduced on the same day as Senate Bill 164. One such policy would remove the court’s power to accept lawyers into the bar association and instead give the ability to the governor.
The Supreme Court of Montana is selected through nonpartisan elections, where candidates cannot run under a party banner. Fuller and his allies want to change that. Only six states currently utilize partisan judge elections. And the Center for American Progress found that “partisan elections lead to more campaign contributions and increased partisanship among judges.”
According to ACLU of Montana lobbyist Henry Seaton, the efforts could amount to a power grab by the state GOP.
“One working theory is that if they are able to pass partisan judicial races, they feel that the court system will rule these unconstitutional bills more in favor of them,” Seaton said.
These efforts may be uniquely potent in Montana, but the strategy is on par with a playbook politicians are using across the country. A report from the Brennan Center for Justice found that, in 2023, there were 124 bills in 29 states “attacking the independence of courts.” The bills covered a spectrum of legal avenues that would “inject more politics into how judges are selected,” such as by allowing “judge-shopping,” enabling legislatures to cherry-pick judges for certain cases.
A December 2024 document by Fuller addressed a myriad of partisan complaints that Republicans in the Montana legislature levied against the judiciary branch. Co-signed by over a dozen Republican state legislators, the letter alleges that “the Montana Supreme Court has a long history of hostility toward the Republican Party and conservatives.” They also allege that the bar association endorsed “implicit attacks” on Republicans when a member of a private legal practice, speaking at a bar association panel, criticized the GOP and referred to Governor Gianforte as “Governor Gianforeskin.” Neither the state bar association nor Fuller’s office provided comment in time for publishing.
Laws disempowering state judiciaries could jeopardize the supposed neutrality of the courts. Mississippi, for example, enacted a law that would have “singled out” voters in a majority-Black district by creating new, state-appointed judgeships, while voters in the rest of the state would elect their judges.
The Mississippi Supreme Court overturned that law.
This article originally appeared on Erin in the Morning.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life 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 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 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 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
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.
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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