HELENA — Almost four months after the end of the Montana Legislature’s 2025 session, there’s still one bill that passed the Legislature but hasn’t become law or been vetoed: Senate Bill 437. Republican leaders say they’re delaying that bill on purpose, in an effort to keep it from being held up in court.
“By holding SB 437, we’re making sure this legislation has the strongest chance to stand,” House Speaker Rep. Brandon Ler, R-Savage, said Monday in a statement shared by House Republican staff. “We will not sit back while partisan judges try to erase what the people’s representatives have enacted.”
SB 437, sponsored by Sen. Carl Glimm, R-Kila, seeks to define a person’s sex as being either male or female and fixed at birth. It followed SB 458, a similar bill from Glimm in the 2023 legislative session, which was blocked by a state district judge.
After a bill passes both chambers of the Legislature, the House speaker and Senate president must each sign off on it before it goes to the governor’s desk to be signed into law or vetoed. House Republicans said Monday that Ler was choosing not to give his signature so that it can be held at this step in the process.
“Montanans sent us here to make law, not to let activist judges tear it down the moment the ink dries,” he said in the statement. “We refuse to hand the judiciary an easy path to lump these cases together and stall the will of the people. That’s why we are being deliberate with the timing on SB 437.”
A group of plaintiffs challenged SB 458 after the 2023 session, saying it discriminated against transgender and intersex Montanans. In February, a judge in Missoula ruled the law violated the Montana Constitution’s rights to privacy and equal protection. The state announced it would appeal that decision.
