From Maine to Montana, Legislatures Are Silencing Political Minorities

​Zooey Zephyr and Laurel Libby could not be more different. Zephyr is a transwoman and activist for trans rights. Libby is an acerbic critic of allowing transgender athletes to compete in girls’ sports.
 
Zephyr is a Democratic state representative in bright-red Montana. Libby is a Republican state representative in bright-blue Maine. But they do have one significant thing in common: both were forcibly silenced by their respective legislatures.
 
In 2023, during a debate on restricting gender-affirming care for minors, Zephyr claimed that such a move would exacerbate the high rate of suicide among transgender teens. When she claimed that those who voted for the bill would have “blood on your hands,” Zephyr was expelled, banned from the House chamber for the remainder of the legislative year. This made her absent from the discussions, deliberations, and horse-trading that occurs as Montana passed a housing bill and the state budget.
 
“There will be 11,000 Montanans whose representative is missing,” Zephyr said. She took legal action to restore her right to appear in the chamber, but her legal move became moot when the legislative year ended.
 
Why was Laurel Libby silenced? She put up a social media post showing a transgender high school athlete who had come in fifth place in pole vaulting last year in a boys’ event, only to win first place a year later in the girls’ state championship. When she refused a demand by her Democratic colleagues to remove the post, Libby was censured and denied the right to vote.
 
You might love, loathe, or be indifferent to either legislator and her cause. But both were commenting on an issue that is inherently political and can only be settled in our society by political means. With such an emotional issue, this is sure to entail some hot words. That’s democracy.
 
What’s not democracy is that in both Montana and Maine – where one party controls the governorship, the state House, and Senate – a member of the opposing party, and therefore her constituents, were silenced.
 
This was so egregious that last week, the U.S. Supreme Court used its emergency docket to issue a stay in the expulsion of Rep. Libby from the Maine chamber. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson protested in a dissent that the Court had come to rely too much on the “short fuse” of the emergency docket. When dealing with the rights of legislatures, the Court has reason to move carefully. But if the Court had not acted, how many more months or years would Libby be forbidden from representing her constituents?
 
And without a temporary restoration from the Court, if Libby were to ultimately win her lawsuit, how would she then be compensated for lost votes and a ruined term in office?
 
Legislatures do have a right – and sometimes good reason – to punish and even expel members for extreme behavior. But the same government that cannot silence one individual should not be allowed to silence a legislator and the thousands she represents.
 
The Court made the right call in favor of the First Amendment.

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