CALLS TO ACTION
Week 5 of the session has us drowning in the good, the bad, and the ugly bills! Here are a few we’d love for y’all to take action on this week. If this feels overwhelming (it is!), just pick the one or two that matter most to you– no one can do everything, but everyone can do something!
Let your representatives know that you trust school librarians to make sure children are receiving age-appropriate materials, and ask them to vote NO on HB 234.
Let the House Judiciary Committee know that you don’t care much for transphobic, regressive and overreaching policies, and send them a message urging them to vote NO on HB 361.
HB 303 passed out of committee on Thursday, and is now moving to the House floor. Send a message to your representatives asking them to defend the balance between patient and provider rights and vote NO on HB 303.
Contact your Senator and let them know that you support trans youth’s access to gender-affirming care and oppose the harmful and unconstitutional SB 99.
Tell the House State Administration Committee that you want our democracy to be more, not less, accessible, and ask them to vote NO on HB 306!
The Senate Energy and Telecommunications Committee is considering a bill that would repeal all of Montana’s energy goals.Let them know you want them to vote NO on HB 170!
SB 141, which would replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day, is being heard by the Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee on February 8 at 3 PM. You can register to testify here or send a message to the committee members here!
Let your Representative know that you support efforts to increase housing affordability, and tell them to vote YES on HB 337!
Ask the House Human Services Committee to vote YES on HB 317, which would create a Montana Indian Child Welfare Act, helping keep indigenous families intact and increasing state protections for Native youth.
Remember – you can find step-by-step instructions for sending messages and giving public comment in our resource guide.
Update Corner
Gender-affirming care
Despite overwhelming opposition from Montana families, teachers, medical professionals, and trans youth, SB 99passed out of committee on Monday. Contact your Senator and let them know that you support trans youth’s access to gender-affirming care and oppose this harmful and unconstitutional bill.
“Obscenity” in schools
HB 234, the bill that takes collection development out of the hands of libraries, prohibiting minors from accessing “obscene” materials, also passed out of committee. Ugh. Importantly, it’s been amended to now only apply to public schools, leaving public libraries and museums out of this mess. Still, it limits young people’s ability to access information and, like HB 359 (read more below!) is backed by an underlying ideology that equates queerness with obscenity. Let your Representative know that you trust school librarians to make sure children are receiving age-appropriate materials, and ask them to vote NO on HB 234.
Then, make sure you’re subscribed to the What the Helena podcast! For this week’s episode, we sat down with former Imagine IF Library Director Martha Furman to hear her take on book bans, attacks on libraries, and more! Coming soon wherever you get your podcasts.
#goals
Remember HB 170, the bill (already passed through the House) to repeal the state’s current energy goals and development processes? Well, it had a hearing in the Senate’s Energy and Telecommunications committee on Tuesday this week, at which Forward Montana testified in opposition.
One of the proponents from the governor’s office argued that, because this part of the code was written 30 years ago, it leaves newer technologies out of the picture. However, there is no wording that says the legislature can only use the technologies listed as options to carefully plan with and for Montana’s environmental future; on the contrary, it actually encourages development of new technologies.
The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Steve Gunderson of Libby, pointed out that many of these policies are (allegedly) already reflected in some environmental laws, but that’s actually the point – goal-oriented policies are meant to guide legislation, towards creating a lasting impact. The current policy does need improvement, but by no means should it just be scrapped, especially with no proposed alternatives to guide future planning and lawmaking. Sustainable energy development is still a priority for Montanans!
All in all, this stuff is complicated, like all things in government; but along with other attacks around energy and climate (to keep up with all of those, check out the work our friends over at the Montana Environmental Information Center are doing) this bill makes us nervous. The Senate’s Energy and Telecommunications Committee hasn’t voted on the bill yet, so let them know you want them to vote NO on HB 170!
Leave them kids alone
Another week, another anti-trans bill…
HB 361essentially allows students to deadname and misgender transgender students with no disciplinary repercussions. This bill “clarifies” the list of unlawful discriminatory practices in education to specifically exclude “calling another student by the student’s legal name” or referring “to another student by the student’s sex” – euphemistic language that would permit transphobic bullying and discrimination in schools. By interfering with schools’ abilities to handle student conflicts in a way that is affirming, legislators are again ignoring the mental wellbeing of trans, non-binary, and Two-Spirit youth.
Let the House Judiciary Committee know that you don’t care much for transphobic, regressive and overreaching policies, and send them a message urging them to vote NO on HB 361.
A hearing for HB 361 will be held on Wednesday, February 8th at 8am, and folks will be able to sign up for virtual comment starting on February 5th. If you’re able to testify in person, you don’t need to sign up!
Of, by, and for which people?
HB 306, sponsored by Rep. Braxton Mitchell of Columbia Falls, would make a seemingly simple change to Montana’s laws. All it does is require a candidate for office in Montana to be registered to vote at the time of their election. How bad could that be, right?
But hang on. Do you remember what the legislature did in 2021? They passed SB 169, which explicitly made it more difficult to register to vote using your student ID, and HB 176, which took away Montana’s extremely popular Election Day voter registration. These laws were found unconstitutional last September in a court case that will now head to the Montana Supreme Court (shoutout to our sibling organization, Forward Montana Foundation, for being a plaintiff in that lawsuit!) because they created additional barriers for young people and those living on reservations to cast a ballot. If the legislature is making it more difficult for certain groups of people to register to vote, namely Native Americans and young Montanans, then it is clear this policy would make it more difficult for those people to run for office.
Requiring candidates to be registered to vote only adds to the long list of policies that make it harder for folks to engage in democracy. HB 306 is still being considered by the House State Administration committee. Let them know that you want our democracy to be more, not less, accessible and ask them to vote NO on HB 306!
Small Footprint, Big Deal
On Tuesday, the House Local Government Committee heard HB 337, a bill sponsored by Rep. Katie Zolnikov of Billings that would prohibit Montana cities from requiring lot sizes larger than 2,500 square feet. Currently, some of Montana’s most in-demand towns– like Missoula, Bozeman, and Kalispell– have minimum lot size requirements that force developers to build larger, more expensive single-family homes that are only attainable to wealthier folks. This bill would allow for more homes to be built within already-developed areas, meaning more walkable neighborhoods, decreased urban sprawl, and preservation of our ever-cherished wide open Montana spaces.
The best part? This bill could make home ownership much more attainable to young Montanans– many of whom are increasingly feeling like we will never have the means to own a house in the place we call home– by allowing for lower-cost construction of smaller homes, resulting in a less sticker-shock-inducing price tag for the final product.
We know that there’s no one-size-fits-all solution that’s going to solve our state’s housing crunch. This is just one of many policies that could help increase the availability of affordable housing in our communities, and we’re stoked to see it backed by so much bipartisan support. Let your Representative know that you support efforts to increase housing affordability, and tell them to vote YES on HB 337!
P.S. – Confused about how zoning, regulation, de-regulation, local control, and more play into housing policy? Relatable! Join us in Bozeman on March 11 for the Montana Youth Organizing Summit: No Place Like (A) Home, where we’ll talk about all these things and more. There’s no cost to attend, and limited lodging and travel assistance is available for folks who RSVP by February 10.
Hero of the Week
Sen. Shane Morigeau
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – our current political environment still features people who do not believe in the basic rights of Indigenous people, and refuse to reckon with our past. Sen. Shane Morigeau of Missoula, though, is working to change this environment by sponsoring numerous great pieces of legislation. One such bill is SB 141, which would create Indigenous People’s Day as an official state holiday in Montana. This holiday would replace Columbus Day, a move which recognizes that our state should not commemorate the falsehood that one can “discover” land where millions of people already lived and thrived. SB 141 is being heard by the Senate Education and Cultural Resources Committee on February 8 at 3 PM. You can register to testify here or send a message to the committee members here!
While Sen. Morigeau has been a forceful advocate for Indigenous justice, his heroism doesn’t end there. He also sponsored SB 146, which would require employers to be transparent in displaying the salaries or wages they are offering to employees.
As Sen. Morigeau pointed out in SB 146’s committee hearing on January 17, employers being able to hide how much they pay contributes to unequal pay across gender and racial groups. When pay transparency laws are passed, these discrepancies tend to go down. Unfortunately, SB 146 was tabled in committee on Wednesday, but we’re hopeful that the conversation about wage transparency won’t end there. We appreciate Sen. Morigeau’s commitment to a better future for all Montanans!
Villain of the Week
Rep. Amy Regier
Last Friday afternoon, a committee hearing for HB 303 was scheduled for Monday morning. The deadline to submit written comments or sign up for virtual testimony on any bill is 5PM on the legislative day (read: weekday) before the hearing. That means that the public had just two and half hours to voice their opinions for the public record.
Very shady…but a very fitting way to introduce this underhanded bill, which would allow any medical provider to deny care to any patient on the grounds of the provider’s “ethical, moral, or religious beliefs.” To Rep. Amy Regier of Kalispell, the sponsor of this so-called “Medical Ethics and Diversity Act” and our Villain this week, “ethics” and “diversity” translate to blanket protections for healthcare discrimination.
This bill might sound familiar, and that’s because it is! On a nationwide level, a number of states have adopted suspiciously similar laws, and administrations have been flip-flopping between protecting patients’ rights to access care and allowing health care workers to discriminate on the basis of their beliefs since 2008. In 2019, the Trump administration announced a ‘conscience rule’ for the Department of Health and Human Services, allowing health care workers to cite moral or religious reasons to not provide certain medical procedures, such as abortion, gender-affirming care, and assisted suicide.
However, this rule was held unlawful by three federal district courts and is now being partially rescinded in a way that will hopefully protect the rights of patients and communities to receive access to the care that they need.
Which brings up a good point several opponents of the bill noted at the hearing last Monday – there are already processes in place that allow providers to object to services based on moral and religious grounds. However, the way that HB 303 is written has been compared to a “get-out-of-jail-free card” for employees to discriminate against patients, due to its broadness and lack of patient protections.
HB 303 passed out of committee on Thursday, and is now moving to the House floor. Send a message to your Representative asking them to defend the balance between patient and provider rights and vote NO on HB 303.
Another week of legislative following in the books! As you continue to answer the calls to action from us and others ,make sure you’re taking care of yourself as well. You cannot pour from an empty cup, take time to step away if you need it. We will be back next week with more of WTH is happening this legislative session.