Upper Seven Law
Upper Seven Law is a Montana-based nonprofit law firm dedicated to holding the powerful accountable. Based on the belief that creativity and innovation in law are essential to advancing social justice and public interest objectives, they take smart risks and invest the time necessary to build foundations for long-term accountability work.
Since June 2021, they have invalidated four unconstitutional state laws, preliminarily enjoined two more, caused the redistricting of Montana’s Public Service Commission districts, prevented the Governor from hiding documents from Montanans, and vindicated diverse human and civil rights.
THE CASE
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In 2023, the Montana Legislature passed Senate Bill 109 (“SB 109”), an extreme partisan gerrymander of Montana’s Public Service Commission (“PSC”) districts designed to ensure that only Republicans could be elected to the PSC. Rather than dividing districts along county lines—as has been the practice since the legislature first districted the PSC in 1974—the legislature’s map splits major cities and counties apart. Doing so ignores not only past practice but also traditional districting criteria that normally guides districting. As a result, the map skews voting power in each district towards one party, and jigsaws Montana’s urban centers.
By discriminating against disfavored voters, SB 109’s map violates the Montana Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection and suffrage. The Montana Constitution expressly protects against discrimination on the basis of political ideas and includes a more robust right to vote than exists under the federal constitution. Our case builds on recent voting rights victories in Montana—our own and others’—and serves as a model for curbing partisan gerrymandering.
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In October 2023, Upper Seven Law filed suit on behalf of members of the LGBTQ+ community to invalidate the recently passed Senate Bill 458 (SB 458), a law that will require the incorporation of a precise and unscientific definition of sex as binary throughout the Montana Code. In purporting to define sex as binary, SB 458 attempts to erase the sexual identity of nonbinary, transgender, and Two Spirit individuals, further marginalizing groups already under attack. The law will force changes to forty existing code sections ranging in subject matter from criminal expungement and highway directional signage to laws governing probate and mental health facilities. It codifies bigotry.
The bill is also simply anti-science, denying the existence of over 60 medical conditions that might result in a person being born with genitalia, reproductive organs, chromosomes, or hormones that do not fit within a binary definition of sex. Our challenge invokes both the Montana Constitution and the First Amendment.
