06-05-2025
GOP majority, governor had few victories in push to overhaul judicial system
The door to the old Supreme Court Chamber at the Montana Capitol. (Micah Drew/Daily Montanan)
In the final hours of Montana's 2025 Legislative session, a long, drawn-out war over whether to allow the state's highest elected judges to run with partisan affiliation had its final battle.
Judicial reform was a stated priority for the GOP-dominated Legislature this session, an idea backed by Gov. Greg Gianforte. In particular, he sought to have state Supreme Court justices elected on a partisan basis, instead of the current, nonpartisan elections.
Many Republicans said a party affiliation would offer voters transparency to better understand the candidates on the ballot, while opponents of the idea said politicizing the court system would lead hurt a justice's impartiality.
Even recently elected Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Cory Swanson, a more conservative member of the state's highest bench, warned lawmakers against making the judiciary partisan.
Lawmakers seemed to take Swanson's words to heart, killing a half-dozen bills that proposed different ways to bring about the partisan change to the judiciary branch. But during the last two weeks of the session, Gianforte remained optimistic, telling the press repeatedly that there was 'still time.'
On the morning of April 30, the last day of the session, during a round of votes on a few final pieces of legislation, House Minority Leader Katie Sullivan, D-Missoula, received a text. And then another.
The governor's office, a lobbyist told her, was planning to attach an amendment to House Bill 710, a bill titled 'Generally Revise Laws Related to the Judiciary,' that would have made Supreme Court races partisan.
The governor's office did not respond to requests for comment on this story. However, in Montana, a governor can make a suggestion to a bill with an amendatory veto, meaning it's a suggestion until it's approved by the state House and Senate.
Sullivan said she never saw the specific amendment — though a previously published gubernatorial amendment to another bill would have allowed Supreme Court candidates run with a partisan affiliation — but she confirmed the governor's office was working on a similar amendment.
The amendatory veto would have dropped the drastic and much debated issue in the closing moments of a long Legislature that had been in session nearly constantly since Jan. 2.
And she wasn't going to have it.
'I was going to leave,' she told the Daily Montanan.
Using her own legislative power, Sullivan sent word back that if the governor proposed the change, she was ready to stand up and make the motion to sine die, adjourning the Legislature on the spot. If the Legislature adjourned right then and there, it would have ended the process of reforming the judiciary – and halted several other key bills Republicans supported.
One of the few bills left for the chamber to vote on included final approval of one of the major property tax bills, which gave Sullivan additional leverage in her threat to leave. With 42 Democrats, she only needed nine Republicans who wanted to end the session, and 39 had opposed the property tax bill. She could tank that bill to keep partisan elections at bay.
There still would have been a property tax relief bill — another one had already passed — but the bills were linked and Sullivan said it would have created difficulties in the implementation.
It was the 'last thing I wanted to do,' she told the Daily Montanan. But 'something as explosive as that issue was all session… why do it in a governor's amendment at the end unless you're trying to play games and cause chaos?'
Ultimately, through discussions with other legislators including Rep. Llew Jones, R-Conrad, the architect behind the property tax bill and close legislative ally of Gianforte, the governor's amendment never materialized.
The Legislature adjourned hours later, and in 2026, an open seat for the Montana Supreme Court will be decided in a nonpartisan election — even though some politicians question that.
'We have nonpartisan races in Montana in name only,' Gianforte said during an April 17 press conference. 'We should call a spade a spade, and attribute them to the party from which they come.'
The last-minute attempt to implement changes to the judicial system was 'super irritating' to Sullivan.
'How many times do we have to vote on the same bill?' she said. 'It was a fitting end for a session of playing whack-a-mole with partisan judges and it was my last whack-a-mole moment that was about to come in at the last minute.'
During the interim, the Senate Special Select Committee on Judicial Oversight and Reform requested nearly 30 bill drafts related to changing the judicial branch, including one, Senate Bill 42, which would have required judges at every level to run with partisan affiliation.
During the session's 85 days, an additional four bills hit the floor with various versions of partisan elections, along with adjacent bills allowing political parties to fund judicial candidates and allow candidates to take part in political events.
But among the 150 lawmakers, the appetite for injecting additional politics into the court system wasn't there — at least not for a majority of legislators.
Lawmakers voted against all five bills directly changing how judges are elected — some voted down in the House, others by the Senate.
In fact, from the original 27 bills that came from the interim committee, only a handful were sent to the governor's desk.
'I'll say this, what we do have is a great foundation for reform,' Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, who served on the committee, told reporters after the session adjourned. 'I think that judicial reform is critical, continuously. It's important for our judges to have accountability. It's important for preventative transparency, and what we did this session helps start that process.'
Among the bills that passed was Senate Bill 40, which requires that any closed meetings involving judicial deliberations be recorded and made public once a case is finalized; Senate Bill 41, which ensures that when a district court judge is substituted from a case, the process for replacing them is randomized; and Senate Bill 45, which establishes a judicial performance commission that will evaluate justices and give the public more insight into their effectiveness.
'You all know, when it comes to voting for judges, it is very difficult to know who they are, what their track record is, and how they rule on the bench. This bill will give greater transparency to that,' McGillvray said.
Another win for the GOP majority was passage of House Bill 39, which allows political parties to donate to judicial candidates, offering at least a little bit of partisanship into elections.
'I think we had a good session on judicial reform,' McGillvray said. 'We're undaunted in our efforts to continue that, and we will do so next session.'
