19-05-2025
Judge extends pause on ‘bathroom bill' with preliminary injunction
A sign outside one of the bathrooms in the Montana State Capitol. House Bill 121 would restrict access to bathrooms based strictly on biological sex. (Micah Drew/ Daily Montanan)
A district court judge in Missoula extended a pause on state officials from enforcing a new Montana law restricting access to public restrooms, changing rooms and sleeping spaces based on an individual's sex assigned at birth.
Missoula District Court Judge Shane Vannatta's 51-page ruling Friday delivered a preliminary injunction blocking House Bill 121 from being enforced. Vannatta last month issued a temporary restraining order on the bill.
'This ruling reaffirms the truth about bathroom bans: they're motivated by prejudice, and they don't protect anyone,' said Robin Turner, Montana staff attorney at Legal Voice working with the plaintiffs, said in a statement. 'HB 121 undermines Montana's strong constitutional protections against government overreach and subjects people to unacceptable privacy violations. Transgender people are vulnerable to violence in restrooms, and they deserve protection instead of persecution.'
HB 121, sponsored by Billings Republican Rep. Kerri Seekins-Crowe, applies to all public facilities and those that receive public funding, including correctional centers, juvenile detention facilities, local domestic violence programs, public buildings and public schools. It includes leased public spaces and covers libraries, museums, hospitals, and university buildings, and it requires covered entities to 'take reasonable steps' to keep members of the opposite sex out.
In the suit, plaintiffs, including transgender and intersex Montanans, argue HB 121 violates their rights under the state constitution, including 'the rights to equal protection, privacy, to pursue life's basic necessities, and due process.'
Attorneys for the State of Montana argued that the law is intended to provide additional protection and privacy for women and girls in these spaces from biological males.
'Today, we're maintaining equal opportunity for all Americans, while also protecting women and girls and their right to safe and separate facilities and activities,' Gianforte said in a statement when he signed HB 121 in March. 'Because we think it's pretty simple. A man shouldn't be in a women's restroom. Shouldn't be in a women's shower room. And shouldn't be housed in a women's prison.'
In the court ruling, Vannatta says that the state's argument that the law is not discriminatory against transgender people — because the definitions of 'sex,' 'male,' and 'female' apply to all Montanans — is 'disingenuous.'
The plaintiffs in court documents argued that transgender Montanans have been subjected to repeated unequal treatment by the state, pointing to five separate bills passed by the Montana Legislature over the last three sessions that target transgender individuals.
'Transgender Montanans have been subjected to such a history of purposeful unequal treatment and have been relegated to such a position of political powerlessness as to command extraordinary protection.'
The court order also says that the state has so far failed to support its arguments that the law helps protect women by not providing evidence of 'how female privacy and safety are threatened by trans females.'
'In addition, the State does not provide evidence of how the safety of trans females may be implicated by requiring trans females to use men's restrooms. The State does not provide evidence of how cis female privacy and safety may be implicated by requiring trans males to use the women's restrooms,' according to the order.
The state can appeal the decision to the Montana Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the preliminary injunction will remain in place until the court rules on the complaint.
The decision follows another last week by a Missoula County District Court judge that permanently struck down a law from the 2023 Legislature that sought to ban gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth.
