The ACLU Is Coming to Transgender Lawmaker Zooey Zephyr’s Aid

The ACLU announced Monday it is suing on behalf of Montana’s first and only transgender representative, whom state Republicans censured last week after she slammed their anti-trans legislation.

The Montana House of Representatives voted along party lines Wednesday to censure Representative Zooey Zephyr. She will be barred from entering the House chamber and forced to vote remotely on bills, effectively silencing her for the rest of the legislative session.

Since being censured, Zephyr has set up office on the bench just outside the House chamber. She slammed the motion against her as a “disturbing and terrifying affront to democracy.”

“House leadership explicitly and directly targeted me and my district because I dared to give voice to the values and needs of transgender people like myself,” she said in a statement with the ACLU of Montana. “By doing so, they’ve denied me my own rights under the Constitution and, more importantly, the rights of my constituents to just representation in their own government.”

Republicans did not allow Zephyr to speak on the House floor for almost two weeks, after she spoke out against a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. She warned that taking away health care would increase suicide among trans and nonbinary kids. “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” she said at the time.

Things came to a head last Monday after a protest broke out in the gallery following the Republican majority’s decision to continue to bar Zephyr from speaking on the floor. The House GOP has tried to cast Zephyr’s actions as disruptive, referring to her initial comments as inappropriate and disrespectful—misgendering her in the process—and accusing her of trying to start an insurrection. They then set the vote to ultimately censure her.

The ACLU has now entered the scene, following a weekend in which nearly 1,000 Montanans rallied in Missoula to express support for the representative.

“Representative Zephyr was elected by the people of her district after running on the very principles she is now being punished for defending,” Alex Rate, legal director of the ACLU of Montana, said in the statement Monday. “In his craven pursuit to deny transgender youth and their families the health care they need, [House] Speaker Regier has unfairly, unjustly, and unconstitutionally silenced those voters.”