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March 28, 2024
A legally embattled state district court judge is stepping down from the bench in early April, creating a vacancy in Montana’s 20th Judicial District.
Montana Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike McGrath notified Gov. Greg Gianforte on March 21 of Judge Deborah “Kim” Christopher’s intent to vacate her seat. Gianforte has the legal authority to fill empty spots on the bench, though the replacement he picks will serve only until the first Monday of January 2025, at which point the victor in the 2024 election for the district’s judgeship will take over.
Christopher’s resignation was first reported by the Lake County Leader.
Christopher, who was the first female judge in her district and sat on the bench for almost 24 years, has been enmeshed in several controversies in recent months. In January, the Montana Supreme Court removed Christopher from a Lake County child custody case after she’d ordered that a 5-year-old should be immediately removed from her mother’s custody in Elmo and placed with her father in Oregon, despite tenuous connections between the child and father. The high court called the order a “misapplication of the law” and the cause of a “gross injustice.”
The court reversed Christopher’s decision, writing that she had ruled based on her personal feelings toward the parents and sided with the father to punish the mother and “to deliberately subject [the child] to potential trauma in a misguided attempt to ‘develop the stress muscles’ of a child that the court believed had been overly protected by his mother and grandmother.”
Courtroom recordings also revealed that Christopher called the mother a “bitch” when talking to staff after a hearing, as reported by the Daily Montanan.
One attorney in the case later filed a misconduct complaint against Christopher before the Judicial Standards Commission, the state’s judicial discipline body. And in a separate matter, a lawyer representing the commission filed a complaint against Christopher for missing work and canceling hearings without lining up a replacement. The complaint alleged she violated Rule 2.5 of the Montana Code of Judicial Conduct, which provides that a judge “shall perform judicial and administrative duties competently and diligently.”
And in yet another matter, also reported by the Daily Montanan, the Department of Public Health and Human Services in January moved to disqualify her from presiding over a case because, it said, she had failed to rule on motions in a timely manner, had made biased comments in her rulings and had contacted parties without their attorneys present.
Her April 6 resignation will effectively end the proceedings against her before the Judicial Standards Commission.
In a letter announcing her resignation to McGrath, Christopher said that it’s been an honor and privilege to be a judge.
“I didn’t get it right all the time and I was always thankful to know if I got it wrong, there were seven Supreme Court Justices who would fix it,” Christopher wrote. “Given the incredible power held by a district judge with people’s lives, children, money, property, and futures, the position has always weighed heavily on me.”
Christopher filed to run for re-election ahead of Montana’s March 11 filing deadline. Her resignation should clear the path for the race’s other declared candidate, Polson criminal defense attorney Britt Cotter, to take her place come January.
In the meantime, though, Gianforte is soliciting applicants to carry out the remainder of Christopher’s term. Would-be replacements have until April 8 to submit applications, after which the governor’s office will field public comment. The appointment deadline is June 8.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
SupCo Strikes GOP Voting Laws in Split Ruling
In a landmark ruling Wednesday, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed a lower court’s decision that four voting laws passed by the 2021 Legislature violate the state Constitution. The 125-page opinion quashed Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s effort to halt Election Day voter registration, outlaw paid ballot collection and reinstate a more stringent set of voter identification requirements.
But when it came to a fourth contested law prohibiting early distribution of mail-in ballots to minors who are turning 18 by the time the polls open, the bench cut in a few different directions.
Justices Mike McGrath and Jim Shea stuck to the view McGrath outlined in his majority opinion: While the ballot distribution ban in House Bill 506 doesn’t interfere with the right to vote, it does remove a voting option for a particular group of voters. Noting that the state failed to present a compelling argument why that approach was reasonable, the court upheld a Yellowstone County District Court determination that HB 506 is unconstitutional.
Justices Ingrid Gustafson and Laurie McKinnon, who concurred with the rest of McGrath’s opinion, took a stronger stance when it came to ballot access for soon-to-be-eligible voters. The two argued in a separate opinion that the “total or near total elimination of voting options” for those voters demanded an even higher level of legal scrutiny than McGrath’s opinion applied, given that absentee voting has become the predominant form of casting a ballot in Montana.
The sole note of disagreement on that particular law came from Justice Beth Baker. In her own opinion, which largely sided with the majority, Baker took the stance that in upholding Montana’s practice of same-day voter registration, the court had already affirmed an avenue through which anyone turning 18 right before an election could cast a ballot. And because HB 506 was a “modest time, place and manner regulation,” Baker wrote, the Legislature was clearly acting within its constitutional authority.
In a dissent authored by Justice Dirk Sandefur, he and Justice Jim Rice agreed that HB 506 presented a clear violation of the Montana Constitution. When it came to the other three laws, however, the pair took issue with the majority’s broader view that the Montana Constitution affords greater protections for voters than the U.S. Constitution. Sandefur and Rice accused their colleagues of exercising “unrestrained judicial power” in overriding the Legislature’s actions.
The high court’s ruling has added fuel to the embers of the ongoing political conflict between Republican lawmakers and the state’s judges, whom Republicans have often accused of “legislating from the bench” when they invalidate laws passed by the GOP legislative majority.
On Wednesday, Senate President Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton — who is running for clerk of the Supreme Court this cycle — said in a statement that “the Montana Supreme Court is operating so far outside its constitutional boundaries that more and more justices are breaking from the majority to condemn their colleagues’ overreach.” He added that he plans to form a legislative committee “tasked with addressing our out of control courts.”
—Alex Sakariassen and Arren Kimbel-Sannit
Dept. of Corrections
Last week’s edition of Capitolized, which included a story about statements in support of a ceasefire in the war in Gaza signed by several Democratic candidates for office, misattributed the authorship of one of the statements. The web version of the story has been updated. Capitolized regrets the error.
Abortion Initiative Backers Go to Court with Knudsen, Again
A group backing an initiative to enshrine specific protections for abortion access in Montana’s Constitution is again in court against Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen, this time over how Knudsen is proposing to describe the initiative on signature petitions and ballots.
Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights, the group behind the initiative, filed a motion with the state Supreme Court on March 26 asking it to certify its proposed ballot language and to invalidate Knudsen’s, which the group describes as “argumentative, prejudicial, and inaccurate.”
Knudsen’s office has until the close of business on March 29 to respond.
The proposed ballot initiative would insert language in the Montana Constitution stating, among other provisions, that “there is a right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion” that “shall not be denied or burdened unless justified by a compelling government interest achieved by the least restrictive means.”
Abortion in Montana remains legal thanks to the Montana Supreme Court’s 1999 ruling in Armstrong v. State, which tied the right to an abortion to the Montana Constitution’s expansive privacy protections. But the Constitution does not explicitly shield access to the procedure, and a future court could overturn that precedent.
“Just because abortion is currently protected under rulings made by the Montana Supreme Court, that does not mean abortion rights are secured,” Chris Coburn, a spokesperson for the political arm of Montana’s Planned Parenthood chapter, told Montana Free Press last November.
Knudsen, who has the authority to review the legality of ballot initiatives, blocked the proposal in January, determining that the proposed language would violate Montana law barring ballot initiatives from “logrolling” separate issues into one decision for voters. Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights went to court and obtained a ruling overturning Knudsen’s determination.
The language that MSRR proposed to describe the initiative on signature-gathering petitions and on the ballot says the measure “affirms the right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including the right to abortion.”
Knudsen’s office said that language does not accurately reflect the implications of the initiative. His proposed alternative says the initiative “leaves ‘fetal viability’ and ‘extraordinary medical measures’ to the subjective judgment of an abortion provider rather than objective legal or medical standards,” among other descriptions.
In MSRR’s petition to the court, attorney Raph Graybill wrote that Knudsen’s language fails to describe the actual provisions of the initiative and instead presents a list of “misleading, argumentative, prejudicial and false serial hypotheses” about the initiative’s effects.
Once the ballot statement question is settled, a legislative interim committee has 14 days to review the initiative before backers can begin gathering signatures, which are due to county election officials on June 21.
—Arren Kimbel-Sannit
On Background
Montana Supreme Court removes Lake County District Court judge from child custody case: The Daily Montanan has been following the saga of Judge Kim Christopher for months.
Montana Supreme Court declares 2021 voting laws unconstitutional: The Montana Supreme Court this week dealt a serious blow to Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen and her fellow Republicans in the Legislature.
Abortion rights group proposes constitutional amendment to protect access: The proposed abortion ballot initiative is the latest point of conflict in Montana’s ongoing debate about abortion access.