Backers of two ballot initiatives calling for nonpartisan elections for Montana courts are suing Attorney General Austin Knudsen for editing their ballot language.
Knudsen now faces three lawsuits for changes to initiatives intended to keep Montana court races nonpartisan. The group Montanans for Nonpartisan Courts filed two of those lawsuits Friday over the changes to two ballot measures they’re trying to get qualified for the November 2026 ballot.
Constitutional Initiative 132, if approved by voters, would amend the Montana Constitution to require that all judicial races be nonpartisan. Knudsen cleared the initiative for signature gathering but changed the ballot language to suggest that nonpartisan races hide a judge’s true party affiliation. One of Friday’s lawsuits challenges Knudsen’s rewrite. The second filing accuses the attorney general of wrongfully rejecting the initiative known as Ballot Issue 6, which would have required that newly created courts be filled through nonpartisan races.
MNC partnered with another petition group, Montanans for Fair and Impartial Judges, on Oct. 6 to sue over changes made to Constitutional Initiative 131, a petition to make nonpartisan races the constitutional norm specifically for the state Supreme Court and district courts.
The initiatives follow several failed attempts by Republican legislators earlier this year to allow judicial candidates to declare party affiliation. GOP lawmakers have accused the courts of liberal bias after several laws passed by the Legislature in recent years have been ruled unconstitutional. Knudsen has also accused the courts of bias in cases concerning abortion and climate change that his Department of Justice lost.
The contention over Knudsen’s changes to CI-131 and 132 centers on language inserted by the attorney general’s staff that suggests nonpartisan races enable partisans to run for office without disclosing party affiliations. The inserted language states that “a non-partisan election prohibits labeling candidates on the ballot according to the political party the candidate aligns with.”
When explaining the edit to Montana’s secretary of state, Knudsen’s Deputy Solicitor General Brent Mead wrote that the ballot language needed to convey the “practical implication to voters on seeing a non-partisan ballot versus a partisan ballot.”
Attorneys for MNC balked at Mead’s suggestion, arguing that Montanans already know the difference between nonpartisan and partisan races.
“Any voter who reaches CI-132 on the ballot will already have experience with both partisan and nonpartisan elections, having participated in partisan elections for United States Congress and State Legislature and a nonpartisan election for Montana Supreme Court at the top of the same ballot,” argued Raph Graybill, MNC attorney.
The lawsuit concerning Ballot Issue 6 centers on the attorney general’s rejection of the issue because, like CI-132, it calls for a change to the same section of the Montana Constitution. MNC argued that the changes proposed by the rejected ballot issue and the CI-132 didn’t cover the same ground and weren’t in conflict with each other.
MNC asked the Supreme Court to order the attorney general to respond to the lawsuits within five days, arguing that time is running out to gather the necessary 60,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot. Signature gathering must be completed by June 19.
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