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April 17, 2025
Sen. Jacinda Morigeau had heard enough.
By the time the Arlee Democrat rose to speak on the Montana Senate floor April 12, a bill prohibiting incarcerated women from being shackled while giving birth had failed to win unanimous approval.
Granted, the 43 votes assuring the bill’s advancement lit the chamber’s vote board up green, but those four votes in red, all cast by men, stung.
Not long after that, one of the four senators voting against the shackle ban characterized a female lawmaker’s support for red flag gun laws as “histrionics.”
That did it for Morigeau, who isn’t one to rise and speak on every occasion.
“I have seen in my 73 days here, over and over, many times, the women in this body being put down overtly, subtly. And I am just, I am tired of it,” Morigeau, a first-term lawmaker, said. “The disrespect I witnessed is just, I hear all the time about the decorum and the rules we’re supposed to follow, and we stop our meetings to look at the rules, but I don’t see us stopping to call out when we break decorum. So, I just wanted to give my opinion as a youngish woman and tell you that I am upset with how my sex has been treated here.”
There were gestures of agreement from the women in the Senate, who say jaw-dropping displays of sexism aren’t in short supply in the Capitol. As if on queue this week, a debate in the Senate Public Health, Welfare and Safety Committee about whether to offer scholarships to child care workers turned into a discussion about whether it would be cheaper to just pay working women $23,000 to stay home.
Sen. Daniel Emrich, R-Great Falls, raised the issue April 16 during questioning on House Bill 456. When Sen. Cora Neumann, D-Bozeman, asked that Emrich be directed to speak to issues related to the bill, Committee Chair Dennis Lenz, R-Billings, said that Emrich’s point “was interesting,” after which the Great Falls lawmaker wrapped things up.
Bills focused on supporting mothers, or women, haven’t fared well in health committees. Neumann’s own bill to require safe staffing standards for nurses was tabled on a 7-to-4 vote in the Senate health committee. Three of the four votes not to table Senate Bill 372 were cast by women, all Democrats.
Women were aghast when a Neumann bill to include certified doula service under Medicaid coverage was opposed for subsidizing work done by, as Lenz put it, “essentially an extended friend, extended family.”
Senate Majority Leader Tom McGillvray, R-Billings, said on the Senate floor that he had been in the birthing room for his wife and daughter, ergo he was also a doula.
As Montana Free Press reported previously, doulas are trained nonmedical professionals who provide care and information to pregnant women before and after birth, though professional certification isn’t required in Montana.
Neumann told Capitolized that she had been instructed so many times to shorten her comments when discussing bills in committees and on the floor that she set a timer on her cellphone. It turned out she was speaking one-half to one-quarter as long as the average man, she said.
There are 16 female senators who are women, five of whom are Republican. Three of the chamber’s four lawyers are women. None of the attorneys are Republican.
Capitolized earlier in the session wrote about the communication breakdown between Senate Judiciary Chair Barry Usher, R-Molt, and Vice Chair Andrea Olsen, D-Missoula. It’s customary for vice chairs to sit beside the chair, but Olsen was relocated after advising Usher about law and procedure, including the public’s right to participate.
Usher told Capitolized in January that he didn’t need to be told how to run a meeting. The chair has gone as far as cutting off Olsen’s microphone in mid-question since then.
Usher was one of the four senators to vote against prohibiting women from being shackled while giving birth. The law wasn’t necessary, Usher told senators April 12, because shackling women during childbirth wasn’t a practice at Montana institutions. That meant the law, if passed, was as Usher put it, “code clutter.”
That’s not how Sen. Laura Smith, D-Helena, remembered the conversation in the Senate Judiciary Committee. She relayed it to the Senate as a whole April 12.
“It has happened, unfortunately. The sponsor of this bill, this topic actually came to his attention because this actually occurred here in Montana,” Smith said. “This bill also applies to detention centers. It’s not just the [Department of Corrections]. We’ve got to have consistency on this issue, and so this is a really straightforward way of ensuring that we’ve got consistency and that it doesn’t happen in our state.”
The disparaging remarks that prompted Morigeau to speak up stemmed from a bill to prohibit local governments from imposing red flag gun laws, also known as extreme risk protection orders, or ERPOs. Courts issue the orders to remove weapons from individuals considered a danger to themselves or others. Gun sales are also prohibited, at least conditionally based on risk.
In objecting to the bill, Sen. Ellie Boldman, D-Missoula, recounted the story of Catherine Woods, who was murdered in Miles City by stalker Justin Schiller in 2008. Schiller had been involuntarily committed to the Montana State Hospital for up to 90 days after attempting to kill himself and indicating to authorities that he was a danger to Woods. When released from Warm Springs after 12 days, Schiller returned to Miles City, bought a gun at a hardware store, and shot Woods.
The state of Montana didn’t forward Schiller’s information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which would have background-checked Schiller and potentially disqualified him from purchasing firearms.
The issue Boldman raised was that Montana doesn’t have a red flag law to ban, but the bill, which passed the Senate, would prevent law enforcement in Montana from enforcing a red flag ban on someone under court order in another state.
“Her family said he was a danger. He stalked her. He told the nurses at Warm Springs that he was obsessed with her,” Boldman said. “When he was discharged from Warm Springs mental hospital in Montana, he went to the Ace Hardware in Miles City, Montana. When she drove her car out of that parking lot, he shot her dead because we don’t have a red flag law in Montana. This bill is not needed. …It’s not about gun rights. This is about people that are, could be, victims of real crimes.”
Sen. John Fuller, R-Kalispell, then described Boldman’s testimony as “histrionics.”
“This bill is a design to protect your inalienable rights, and it is a limitation on governments to disarm the populace. Do not fall for the histrionic claims that it will lead to death and destruction in the streets,” Fuller said.
Toward the end of the floor session, Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, summed up sexism in the Legislature based on the experiences of himself and his spouse, Rep. Katie Zolnikov, separately sharing the same comments with the same people, but in the same circumstances he’d be described as “caring” and his wife as “emotional.”
“I think that the line [being drawn] has to be done now, especially, especially since we are all equal. We are all [representing] 20,000 people, we all have the right to have our arguments how we want to.” Zolnikov said.
—Tom Lutey