Montana’s Republican-dominated House voted Wednesday to ban Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who had said GOP lawmakers would have “blood” on their hands for passing bills restricting transgender rights and rallied protesters Monday after Speaker Matt Regier blocked her from being recognized to speak, from the House chamber for the remainder of this year’s legislative session.
Under the disciplinary measure approved on a 68-32 vote Wednesday, Zephyr – the 34-year-old Democrat from Missoula who last year became the first openly transgender woman elected to Montana’s legislature – will be allowed to retain her seat and cast votes remotely. But she will not be able to participate in debates. The session is scheduled to end next week.
The move by Montana Republicans comes just weeks after two Democratic lawmakers in Tennessee were expelled over their protests on the House floor demanding action to address gun violence after a mass shooting at a Nashville school. It’s the latest example of a Republican-dominated state legislature restricting who can be heard – and what can be said – about policy debates that minority Democrats in the state view as matters of life and death.
Montana House Majority Leader Sue Vinton, the Republican who sponsored the resolution, said on the House floor Wednesday that Zephyr had “encouraged the continuation of the disruption of this body, placing legislators, staff and even our pages at the risk of harm.”
“Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of this body, including the rules of decorum,” she said.
Zephyr, who was given five minutes to address the chamber ahead of the vote, said Republicans who hold a supermajority in Montana’s House and Senate were using decorum as a “tool of oppression” and said his restrictions on her speech and of protesters supporting her were a “nail in the coffin of…
Read the full article here