A pair of Republican-backed bills concerning LGBTQ+ rights in Montana failed to pass the House floor this month, marking rare legislative defeats for a political agenda that has otherwise seen consistent success in the state Capitol. The bills, which aimed to restrict drag performances and penalize families supporting their kids’ gender-affirming care, met impassioned opposition from Missoula-area lawmakers and a surprising number of Republicans.
These votes come at a time when Montana’s Republican-controlled Legislature has passed numerous bills targeting transgender rights, often only challenged or overturned in court. Many of these measures have, in recent history, moved swiftly through the lawmaking process with minimal opposition, which is what makes the failure of these two bills particularly noteworthy.
House Bill 675, sponsored by Rep. Caleb Hinkle, R-Belgrade, creates a right for individuals to sue a person who “knowingly promotes, conducts, or participates as a performer” in a drag show. Hinkle has framed his bill, reworking a 2023 law that fell to a legal challenge, as necessary to protect youth from “explicit content” while also removing the 2023 law’s outright ban on certain drag performances.
“I’m here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish.”
The bill passed out of the House Judiciary Committee — often the venue for debates over hard-line conservative social legislation in recent sessions — on March 1. But on March 6, several House Republicans joined with all House Democrats to vote down the proposal during a marathon floor session ahead of the Legislature’s transmittal break. That vote followed an impassioned floor speech from Missoula Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr, the first transgender woman elected to the Montana Legislature.
“In committee when the sponsor closed on this bill, he said this bill is needed, he said, and I quote his words, ‘Because transgenderism is a fetish based on crossdressing’,” Zephyr told her colleagues. “Those were his words for why this bill is necessary. And I’m here to stand before the body and say that my life is not a fetish. My existence is not a fetish. I was proud, less than a month ago, to have my son up in the gallery here. Many of you on the other side met him. When I go to walk him to school, that is not a lascivious display. That is not a fetish. That is my family.”
Zephyr was joined in her opposition by Rep. Sherry Essmann, a Republican from Billings.
“Everybody in here talks about how important parental rights are,” Essmann said on the floor. “In addition to parental rights, parental responsibility is also important. If you can’t trust a decent parent to decide where and when their kids should see what, then we have a bigger problem.”
The bill ultimately failed on a 44-55 vote. The city of Missoula also officially opposed the bill.
The same day, the body voted down House Bill 754, sponsored by Rep. Lukas Schubert, R-Kalispell, a bill that defined a child receiving gender-affirming care with parental support as being “in immediate or apparent danger of harm,” and which would have essentially served as a mandate for immediate “emergency” removal of the child from their home.
In addition, the bill ensures that parents will not face intervention or legal action for opposing their child’s transition, offering a layer of protection from potential abuse or neglect allegations. Altogether, the bill legally protects parents who block their child’s transition while simultaneously penalizing parents who affirm it. In a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on March 3, Schubert called the bill “a vital step to protect our children and preserve the rights of parents to protect their children from harmful gender ideology in our great state.”
(Also in the background is the state health department’s 2023 removal of a transgender teenager from Glasgow from their parent’s custody, a controversy that pitted hard-right legislators and activists against the administration of GOP Gov. Greg Gianforte.)
“I think part of what happened is that there is a sense that the volume of these bills has become hard to justify.”
Floor debate over that bill featured opposition from Missoula Democratic Rep. SJ Howell, who is non-binary. Howell’s testimony focused on the complications the proposal could create for Child Protective Services workers and appealed to the Republican majority’s skepticism of state intervention.
“Those CPS workers — who by the way are already busy, working to protect kids and support families who are dealing with issues like domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, real issues that we know are a problem in our state — are also now investigating these reports,” Howell said. “Put yourselves in the shoes of a CPS worker who is confronted with a young person, 15 years old, maybe, who is happy, healthy, living in a stable home with loving parents, who is supported, and they are supposed to remove the child from that home and put them in the care of the state. Even if you disagree … that young people deserve the right to live their lives with freedom and self-determination, including with regards to their gender determination, I hope we can agree that the vision laid out in this bill is not right for Montana.”
The bill failed 27-71.
The Montana Legislature has considered a slew of bills in recent sessions restricting rights and expression of transgender people, especially youth, whether that meant in medical care, sports or public performance. In many, if not most, cases, these bills passed through the Legislature and received Gianforte’s signature before ultimately falling to a legal challenge in court. Hinkle’s 2023 bill, for example, was halted on First Amendment grounds by a state district court judge only days before the state’s annual Pride celebration in Helena.
Comparatively few of these bills, however, have fallen in the legislative process.
While the floor speeches on house bills 675 and 754 certainly turned some heads, it’s exceedingly rare for well-reasoned rhetoric to translate to actual legislative results. The Legislature, despite occasional indications otherwise, is not a speech and debate club. Lawmakers respond to a number of different incentives — material, electoral, personal, religious, social, strategic — when they cast their votes. In recent years, it’s not unheard of for comparatively moderate Republicans to publicly support hardline legislation they might privately have issues with under the assumption the bill will get caught up in court anyway, shielding them from potential attacks in a primary. In other words, legislatures tend to operate more like a season of “Survivor” than “The West Wing.”
In an interview with The Pulp this week, Howell said it’s necessary to look at the defeats of 675 and 754 in the context of these previous legislative actions.
“I think part of what happened is that there is a sense that the volume of these bills has become hard to justify,” they said. “And in addition to that, many of these bills are taking their second or third swings at issues that we’ve passed bills on in the past, and some have been struck down in courts.”
Howell also said that there have been more “productive” conversations between legislators on these social issues this session as opposed to the last two. One reason for this, they said, may be that the partisan balance in the building has shifted over time. In the 2024 election, helped by a new legislative map, Democrats in the House went from 32 seats to 42. (Senate Democrats only picked up two seats, but have found their own ways to exert control over the agenda in the upper chamber this session).
“The numbers do matter,” Howell said.
But it would be inaccurate to suggest these numbers have created a new policy consensus in Helena. While the Hinkle and Schubert bills stalled out, House Bill 121, a “bathroom bill,” is headed to the governor’s desk. Senate Bill 164, which would create a felony penalty for adults who provide or procure gender-transition related treatments to minors under 16 years of age, passed out of the Senate and awaits approval in the House. And there are more.
Still, the failures of HB 675 and 754 are significant. What exactly they signify, though, is harder to determine.
“Both in 21 and 23, it was really hard for us to find a line in the sand around some of these attacks,” Howell said. “I think it’s too early, personally, to say whether we’ve found one or not, but in another month we will know.”
