MISSOULA, Mont. — A judge in Montana threw out on Tuesday a law that said “sex” in state law could only mean male or female. The judge said the law was illegal.
In Missoula, District Court Judge Shane Vannatta said the law that was passed last year was unconstitutional because it didn’t make it clear what it was meant to do.
People who are transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and other genders fought the law, which was similar to laws passed in Kansas and Tennessee because they said it doesn’t protect and recognize gender-nonconforming people legally. Vannatta didn’t answer that point; instead, she said that the bill’s title didn’t say whether the word “sex” meant sexual activity or gender, and it also didn’t say that the words “female” and “male” would be defined in the bill’s body.
Vannatta wrote, “The title does not give general notice of the nature of the legislation in a way that protects against deceptive or misleading titles.”
The bill was passed during the same session that banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender children and kicked transgender Democratic Rep. Zooey Zephyr off the House floor after she protested against Republican lawmakers who had shut her up.
When a state judge said in 2022 that transgender people could change the gender markers on their birth certificates, Republican Sen. Carl Glimm pushed for the law that Vannatta threw out. He said the law was needed because of that decision.
One of Gov. Greg Gianforte’s spokesman, Sean Southard, said that the governor is proud of the law he signed because it makes the long-standing and commonsense meaning of sex official.
“Words are important. “Unlike this judge, who seems to need a dictionary to tell the difference between a noun and a verb, this administration is dedicated to making sure words have meaning,” Southard said.
A spokeswoman for the Montana Attorney General’s Office, Emilee Cantrell, said the office would continue to defend a law “that holds up to scientific reality.”
There was applause for the decision from the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana.
“Today’s ruling is a major victory for the protections that the Montana Constitution gives to laws made by the legislature,” Alex Rate, the legal director of the group, said.
