In a divided decision, the Montana Supreme Court’s debate about transgender residents, birth certificates and driver’s licenses have put political differences on full display as the state’s highest court ruled that two state agencies likely violated the Montana Constitution by denying residents the ability to change documents to fit their gender identity.
The State of Montana had challenged two aspects of the case, stemming from Lewis and Clark County District Court Judge Mike Menahan’s order. The first is whether Menahan’s injunction of the Senate Bill 458 was correct. The other issue was whether the law discriminated against transgender residents, not allowing them to change the documents while allowing similarly situated cisgender residents to make changes. Appeals were sent to the Supreme Court before the case could get underway.
The court blocked the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services as well as the Department of Justice (which operates the Motor Vehicle Division) from refusing to update those documents to match a resident’s gender identity. The majority’s decision led to charges from two of the court’s more conservative members, Chief Justice Cory Swanson and Justice Jim Rice, to accuse the majority of disregarding science, rewriting history, meddling in political debate and deepening rifts between lawmakers and the courts.
“The majority today has blown through all of these prudential instructions to issue a political decision dressed up in constitutional garb,” Swanson wrote in his dissent. “Now that we have spoken from the judicial mountaintop, where is the incentive toward continued public debate, mutual respect, and accommodation? Each side is in fact incentivized to stake out maximalist positions and then rush to the courthouse so the least democratic branch can settle political disputes better left to policy makers.”
