HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court has upheld a district court decision, striking down three abortion-related laws passed by the 2021 Montana Legislature.
The laws had been challenged by Planned Parenthood of Montana, which argued the three laws were a violation of the state’s right to privacy. The laws have been on hold since 2021 after a preliminary injunction was granted in Planned Parenthood's favor.
The three laws are:
- House Bill 136, which banned abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, except when necessary to prevent serious health risk to the mother.
- House Bill 140, which required abortion providers to ask patients if they wanted to see an ultrasound of the fetus or listen to its heartbeat.
- House Bill 171, which put additional restrictions on medication abortion, including requiring patients to make two in-person visits to a provider.
The 69-page opinion, written by Justice Beth Baker, said the laws violated the Montana Constitution’s right to privacy. Baker cited the Montana Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling, commonly known as the Armstrong decision, which stated that the state constitution’s right to privacy protected access to abortion before a fetus is viable.
“Armstrong thus explicitly and unequivocally acknowledged that the right of individual privacy—encompassing the right to personal and procreative autonomy—is protected separately under Montana’s right to privacy, a broader provision independent of federal law,” wrote Baker.
Montana Governor Greg Gianforte and Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen have argued the Armstrong case was wrongly decided, and the state again made that argument in this case.
Click here to read the full opinion (PDF).
Justice Jim Rice was the sole dissenter in the case, concluding that Armstrong had been wrongly decided, but had established an individual right that has been relied on for years. Rice argued that a narrower view of the privacy provision should be applied. He would have partially invalidated HB 171 as unconstitutional, while upholding the remainder, remanded HB 136 for a trial to resolve issues of fact, and upheld HB 140.
