Montana law defining sex as either male or female struck down by district court judge

A Missoula County District Court judge has ruled that Montana's law which provided a legal definition of “sex” and referred to a person only as a male or female is unconstitutional. 

Judge Shane Vannatta struck down the law, implemented last year, following a lawsuit from plaintiffs identifying as transgender, nonbinary, and other gender-nonconforming identities. They argued that the law denied legal recognition to gender-nonconforming individuals. 

Judge Vannatta, while he did not address claims that the law failed to provide legal recognition to transgender individuals, determined that the law failed to adequately explain what the term “sex” referred to—whether it meant gender or sexual intercourse—and did not indicate the words "male" or "female" would be defined in the body of the bill, according to the Associated Press.

"The title does not give general notice of the character of the legislation in a way that guards against deceptive or misleading titles," Vannatta wrote in his decision.

The Montana bill aimed to “provide a common definition for the word sex when referring to a human.” It defined a male as a “member of the human species who, under normal development, has XY chromosomes and produces or would produce small, mobile gametes, or sperm, during his life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of those gametes."

The bill also defined a female as a “member of the human species who, under normal development, has XX chromosomes and produces or would produce relatively large, relatively immobile gametes, or eggs, during her life cycle and has a reproductive and endocrine system oriented around the production of those gametes."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, which has been an outspoken critic of the law, applauded the ruling.

Today's ruling is an important vindication of the safeguards that the Montana Constitution places on legislative enactments," said Alex Rate, ACLU of Montana legal director.

However, a spokeswoman for the Montana Attorney General’s Office stated that the Attorney General would continue to defend the law, asserting that it "reflects scientific reality."