The nonprofit’s lawsuit, filed this week in Missoula County District Court, requests the court declare the law unconstitutional in part as because it “potentially eliminates discrimination protections for transgender, intersex, and nonbinary people” in a number of settings, as well as protections from “discrimination in general under the Montana Human Rights Act.”

As lawmakers take a deeper look during the interim at how to hire and retain childcare workers in Montana and keep providers operational, the Gianforte administration announced $3 million in federal funds are available for workers in the industry who have to pay for childcare of their own.

A federal judge’s decision whether to permanently block Montana’s drag ban law will have to wait. First, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals will make a decision on the state’s appeal of the initial injunction that temporarily blocked the law in October.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022, 21 states have eliminated or restricted access because of abortion bans. And as States Newsroom has reported, even with health exceptions and especially without them, women have been denied medical care during pregnancy-related emergencies.

She said policymakers need to define “medical necessity” for abortions more broadly, by considering what a pregnancy and birth will mean for a woman’s mental health.

Many of the states with strict abortion bans have large communities of color, and Black women are three times as likely and Indigenous women twice as likely as white women to die of pregnancy-related causes.

The suit filed Tuesday ties in with the challenge to Senate Bill 458, which defines sex as a binary in state law, because it involves records attorneys for the firm requested in preparation for the suit challenging the new law.

“No evidence before the court indicates that minors face any harm from drag-related events or other speech and expression critical of gender norms,” Morris said. “H.B. 359’s terms prove vague and overbroad, chilling protected speech and creating a risk of disproportionate enforcement against trans, Two-Spirit, and gender nonconforming people.”

However, the suit alleges it wasn’t just a legislative oversight that caused this new definition, they point to testimony given during the passage of Senate Bill 458, coupled with examples from state Republican lawmakers that demonstrate a hostility and disregard for residents who don’t identify or cannot be placed in the two biological categories mandate by the Legislature.

“I don’t want to speculate on the exact motivations of this incident but anti-abortion rhetoric and misinformation and talking about reproductive and sexual health care in a way that is stigmatizing or false is really dangerous,” Sullivan said.

She said the Attorney General making false claims the organization is tied to human trafficking is an example of said rhetoric.

“It’s a political statement to serve an elected official’s own interests, rather than anything that’s based in fact,” Sullivan said. “Your average person might take those words at their face value and go with that…I’m not saying that that’s what happened here. But scenarios like that have existed.”

Abbott wrote that the providers had established an actual controversy in the suit, that a restraining order was in the public interest, and that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their argument that the section of the new law “violates the right to individual privacy in the absence of a means of obtaining a license.”

Although Judge Jason Marks said his findings are “not binding at trial,” he found SB 99 likely discriminates based on a person’s status as transgender and also found it likely tramples on the right to privacy guaranteed in the Montana Constitution.

The DOJ called on the Supreme Court to take up the case by arguing that lower courts erred in several ways, including by making “serious legal errors.”

“The court scarcely acknowledged FDA’s detailed analysis of the available scientific evidence,” DOJ wrote. “Instead, it faulted FDA for failing to cite studies that do not exist and for failing to explicitly respond to unfounded objections that were not raised during the administrative process.”

“To the extent HB 937 requires Plaintiffs to obtain abortion-specific facility licensure, it violates Montanans’ right to access abortion from their chosen health care provider,” the filing read. “As this Court and the Montana Supreme Court have repeatedly concluded, singling out abortion care for unique and additional regulation infringes individuals’ fundamental right to abortion.”

Rev. Amber Dixson told the Daily Montanan on Monday the girls came to the church Saturday with their parents to confess to ripping the flag and bringing the sign before going to police. Dixson previously told the Daily Montanan the flag had been flying for several years without incident.

“We must continue to fight against the lingering shadows of bigotry, hatred and inequality that still haunt us today,” said Collins, the first Black mayor in Montana. “Today we celebrate the freedom to love and to be loved just as we are.”

In some states, new laws banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth are dissuading health care providers from offering mental health services and other medical care that isn’t explicitly banned by those laws.

Monday, he said law enforcement officers responded to a call about a rainbow flag being ripped up at the Miles City church, affiliated with the United Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ.

The church is “open and affirming,” or supportive of members who are LGBTQ+.

“When our Republican colleagues allege that gender-affirming care raises particular dangers or due process issues, that is fearmongering at its worst,” the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon of Pennsylvania, said. “Picking on already vulnerable kids in order to stir up chaos that they hope to ride to success at the ballot box.”

The ACLU said Deernose has helped fight for the civil rights and liberties of Montanans in state and federal courts since January 2021.

An all-male panel of anti-abortion religious leaders from around the country met last week to discuss the strategies that should be used to end abortion in every state at any stage of pregnancy, without exceptions for rape and incest, and with criminal punishment for the pregnant person in line with existing criminal penalties for murder, which includes the death penalty.