A newly enacted Montana law, HB 121, bars transgender and intersex people from using restrooms and other sex-separated facilities that correspond to their gender identity in public spaces. In doing so, HB 121 seeks to undermine transgender and intersex people’s personhood and ability to participate in public life. Together with the ACLU of Montana and Legal Voice, the ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative filed this lawsuit on behalf of a group of transgender and intersex Montanans challenging HB 121 as violating numerous provisions of the Montana Constitution.

This case asks whether the state can arrest, charge, and convict someone under Montana’s obstruction statute for exercising their federal and state constitutional right to record police officers in public spaces. The defendant was filming a traffic stop when police instructed him to move farther away. When he did not move as far as they wanted, they arrested him for obstructing a peace officer. The ACLU’s State Supreme Court Initiative, along with the ACLU of Montana, filed an amicus brief in support of the defendant arguing that the officer’s refusal to allow the defendant to peacefully record police activity from a public sidewalk was, in effect, a content-based restriction on speech that could not be justified under strict scrutiny. Even if the restriction was not content-based, our brief argues that it is not a reasonable time place or manner restriction.