Court strikes down Montana law narrowly defining ‘male’ and ‘female’

[Jessica_Rose]

Court strikes down Montana law narrowly defining 'male' and 'female'

https://dailymontanan.com/2025/02/19/court-strikes-down-montana-law-narrowly-defining-male-and-female/

By: Darrell Ehrlick (19 Feb 2025)


Missoula County District Court Judge Leslie Halligan didn't mince words in her order striking down Senate Bill 458, passed in 2023, which reshaped Montana law to only have two sexes, male and female.

In her ruling... she said that the bill literally erased some Montana residents from existence. In doing so, Halligan said that Senate Bill 458 was facially unconstitutional, and warned that similar attempts to narrowly define sexes based on political ideology, not science, was likely to meet a similar fate.

The plaintiffs in the case were a group of transgender and intersex residents, many of whom were born with genetic conditions that produced different sex traits and characteristics found in both male and female. The state had argued that even if a strict definition of male and female didn't quite encompass everyone, the changes had no tangible effects on the residents.

However, one resident who was born with an XY pattern, which would normally signify a biological male, has female genitalia and identifies as a woman. Yet on her wedding license, she'd be forced to identify as a male.

The judge said that not only does SB 458 not quite work for some residents, it completely closes them out of aspects of the state, violating the equal protections clause of the Montana Constitution, which guarantees equal treatment to people in the same circumstances.

"By declaring as a matter of law that a human being can only be 'exactly' one of two sexes, SB 458 explicitly excludes (two plaintiffs) from the definition of human beings, causing immediate harm traceable to SB458," the court decision said.