Montana supreme court strikes down Republican-passed voting restrictions

A voter casts his ballot in Missoula, Montana, on 25 May 2017. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

In a significant win for voting rights, the Montana supreme court on Wednesday struck down four voting restrictions passed by the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in 2021.

In a 125-page opinion, the state’s highest court affirmed a lower court’s ruling that the four laws, passed in the wake of Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, violate the state constitution. The laws had ended same-day voter registration, removed student ID cards as a permissible form of voter ID, prohibited third parties from returning ballots and barred the distribution of mail-in ballots to voters who would turn 18 by election day.

After a nine-day trial, the lower court found that the laws would make it harder for some state residents to register to vote and cast a ballot.

A spokesperson for the Republican secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen, who appealed the lower court decision in an attempt to get the laws reinstated, said that she was “devastated” by the supreme court decision.

“Her commitment to election integrity will not waver by this narrow adoption of judicial activism that is certain to fall on the wrong side of history,” the spokesperson, Richie Melby, wrote in a statement. “State and county election officials have been punched in the gut.”

The Montana Democratic party, one of the parties that sued over the restrictive voting laws along with Native American and youth voting rights groups, called the ruling a “tremendous victory for democracy, Native voters, and young people across the state of Montana”.

“While Republican politicians continue to attack voting rights and our protected freedoms, their voter suppression efforts failed and were struck down as unconstitutional,” the executive director, Sheila Hogan, said in a statement. “We’re going to keep working to make sure every eligible Montana voter can make their voices heard at the ballot box this November.”

The chief justice, Mike McGrath, who wrote the opinion, pointed to the laws’ potential to disenfranchise young and Indigenous voters in Montana, who are disproportionately affected by efforts to eliminate same-day voter registration and third-party ballot collection and strict ID requirements.

The Montana constitution, McGrath wrote, affords greater voting protections than the US constitution.

Writing in Election Law Blog, the University of Kentucky election law professor Joshua Douglas called the decision “a model for how state courts should consider the protections for the right to vote within state constitutions”.

“State courts have various tools within state constitutions to robustly protect voters,” he wrote. “The Montana Supreme Court’s decision offers a solid roadmap for how to use state constitutional language on the right to vote. Other state supreme courts should follow the Montana Supreme Court’s lead.”

While Montana has not been won by a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992 and is not expected to be competitive in November, the state will have a high-profile Senate race, with Republicans trying to flip the seat currently held by the Democratic senator Jon Tester.