A federal court judge temporarily blocked the enforcement of Montana’s ban on drag performances on public property two days before Montana Pride events are set to begin.

Montana Pride, which has hosted an annual pride celebration in the state’s capital city for eight years, joined a lawsuit earlier this week questioning the constitutionality of House Bill 359, which banned any drag performances in public spaces, and was signed into law this session. It also bans drag performances in schools and libraries and features consequences for private businesses.

The attorneys, which include the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Montana, Lambda Legal and Perkins Coie of Seattle have asked Marks to stop the law from going into effect, saying that it could irreparably harm the youth, force families out of state and force doctors to abandon part of their practice, or risk losing their medical license.

“What is happening in Helena is not indicative of what people feel like around the state. People value abortion, the privacy of their healthcare decisions,” Sullivan said. “They don’t want lawmakers in the examine room, and we’ll fight to keep it legal. People should know they shouldn’t be afraid or stigmatized. It’s OK to want and need an abortion. It’s a popular thing, and you have support.

President Joe Biden pledged Friday to hold the line against attempts to restrict reproductive rights and abortion access during a campaign rally with the country’s leading abortion rights organizations.

On the eve of the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs that put abortion protections back in the hands of states, more than 100 Montana medical professionals signed a letter calling on Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte and lawmakers to get their hands out of reproductive health care decisions.

“Montana medical professionals call on our state lawmakers and Governor Gianforte to stop their attacks on our patients’ reproductive health and bodily autonomy. Decisions around abortion should be left to women and their trained doctors – not politicians,” the 106 medical professionals wrote in a letter put forward by the Committee to Protect Health Care.

Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Suzan DelBene, a U.S. House member from Washington, said during the 2024 campaigns “the threat to abortion rights nationwide will be clearer than ever.”

“The federal government and states alike are constantly attacking people’s treaties, our rights to abolishing reservations, and our rights as Native people,” Chairman Stiffarm said. “They’re gonna continue to attack anything, everything towards tribes.”

Jawort said she was surprised such a decision would come out of Butte and that officials were perhaps taking the easier route.

“Hiding behind the law is very ‘sus,’ as the kids say,” she said. “It’s very spineless.”

She said she was initially shocked but has since tried to find a silver lining.

“We can expose how silly this law is, that it just targets trans people just like we said. And no one believed us, and here we are,” she said. “So, as an activist, I have to work on Step B, and work on eliminating this law so we can have free speech.”

The Montana Department of Justice and attorneys for the state have filed notices of appeal with the state Supreme Court after a judge in Helena blocked several newly signed bills restricting abortion access and a state health department rule on Medicaid-funded abortions.

“Violence, threats and intimidation tactics should have no place in our political discourse, including in our nation’s ongoing debate over abortion access,” said Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, the ranking member on the panel. “We must condemn all political violence and threats of violence, whatever the beliefs or motivations of those who engage in it and regardless of who the target may be.”

Scanlon chided her GOP colleagues during the hearing for focusing their questions and inviting witnesses based on their belief the Biden administration isn’t doing all it could to prosecute people who attack anti-abortion pregnancy centers under a federal law known as the FACE Act.

Clinics and groups suing to stop the new laws include the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, Planned Parenthood of Montana and the Center for Reproductive Rights. They argue that these new laws will limit a woman’s options so severely that it essentially makes it impossible to obtain an abortion. It also says that the laws discriminate against those on Medicaid.

The lawsuit challenging the rule, which was set to go into effect this month, would require preauthorization for abortion by the state officials, as well as require an in-person exam by a medical doctor – rules that are not required for non-Medicaid patients.

Flowers said the bill should never have been discussed in the first place while Montana deals with other issues needing to be addressed, like housing, child care, mental health and property taxes.

“These amendments do nothing to improve this bill,” Flowers said. “They do nothing to spare trans Montanans the pain and suffering we heard about in hearings for hours.”

The lawsuit from Planned Parenthood of Montana and its chief medical officer, Samuel Dickman, M.D., says that House Bill 721 taking effect would enact immediate and irreparable harm on people seeking abortions through dilation and evacuation procedures, which are often used in the second trimester for abortions and miscarriages.

The lawsuit says HB721 would create an effective ban on pre-viability abortions, which the plaintiffs argue is a violation of Montanans’ right to privacy under the state constitution. The bill will take effect immediately should it be signed by Gianforte.

A February 2023 poll showed that 75% of Montanans oppose changes to our constitutional right to privacy, a right that affirms our ability to make personal healthcare decisions about when or whether to have children. Yet our Montana Sexual & Reproductive Health Collective members continue to track 11 anti-abortion bills still under consideration — including two potential constitutional amendments.

“It really feels like they are attacking abortion care for lower income folks and folks who may rely on public assistance or Medicaid funding. And so, I think looking at low income folks and then folks who have just systemically and institutionally run into barriers to healthcare, so, you know, communities of color, LGBTQ people, transgender people, I think are those who are going to potentially run into continued barriers,” Leighton said.

They also said it’s likely that some of the bills will end up in Montana’s courts.

“The sad reality is that they're -- they're passing these knowing that it will be a waste of taxpayer time and money because they will be litigated later. Knowing, knowing that they're unconstitutional,” Leighton said.

On Wednesday, representatives from the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ rights organization, Georgetown University Law Center and the ACLU spoke about the bill, which they said may be the most radical bill in the country, even at a time when hundreds of bills dealing with the LGBTQ community are moving through legislatures throughout the U.S.

“Forcing someone to give birth against their will is unconscionable, and Montanans will not stand for this government intrusion into our private lives and our personal decisions,” said Aileen Gleizer, with Missoula’s Blue Mountain Clinic. “If you pass this law, you’ll be responsible for harming low-income Montana families and burdening Montanans with costs of paying for forced child bearing.”

The legal notes concludes that given Montana’s broad right to privacy, HB 721 may raise a “constitutional conformity issue” because it infringes on a woman’s right to seek and obtain a pre-viability abortion and conflicts with precedent.