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Category: City Desk

• ACLU
• Montana Supreme Court
• Secretary of State

By Kathleen Shannon - Producer, Contact - News

Big Sky Connection - When the Montana Supreme Court ruled last year that two of the state's voting laws were unconstitutional, the Secretary of State brought the suit to the U.S. Supreme Court, which has declined to hear it. Voting rights advocates say those laws, and other recent bills, target voters who already face barriers. Comments by Alex Rate, deputy director and legal director, ACLU of Montana.

Click on the image above for the audio.  In 2024, at least 10 states enacted 19 restrictive voting laws, according to the Brennan Center for Justice and 21 states enacted 32 expansive ones. (Adobe Stock)

Kathleen Shannon

January 28, 2025 - The nation's highest court has declined to hear a case about Montana voting laws which would have disproportionately affected Native people.

Last year, Montana's Supreme Court decided two laws passed in 2021 to ban same-day voter registration and paid absentee ballot collection were unconstitutional.

Alex Rate, deputy director and legal director of the ACLU of Montana, said people who face too many costs to voting often do not. For those who already face barriers like long distances to elections offices or no residential mail delivery, the laws could have tipped the scales. Rate argued it was the intention of the bill's backers.

"That's what we saw with these laws, was a very deliberate attempt to make it so difficult for people to vote that they would stay home," Rate asserted.

Montana Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last week opted not to hear it. Rate noted the high court does not have jurisdiction to pick up a case on state voting laws.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, states passed almost 80 restrictive voting laws between 2021 and 2024, nearly three times the number passed in the previous few years. So far in Montana's 2025 legislative session, a half-dozen voting-related bills have been introduced by lawmakers, all Republicans.

"We have repeatedly seen Montana courts strike down bills that the Legislature has passed as unconstitutional," Rate pointed out. "And yet they continue to advance things that are patently unlawful."

Rate described the citizens' rights written in the Montana Constitution as "ironclad," including the right to vote.