In a case that could indicate the legal limits of President Donald Trump’s efforts to erase transgender and other groups of sexually diverse individuals from American society, a Montana judge has struck down a law recognizing only two sexes in the state, male and female.

Senate Bill 458 was passed in 2023. The judge called it “a legal fiction.”

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“By declaring as a matter of law that a human being can only be ‘exactly’ one of two sexes, S.B. 458 explicitly excludes (two plaintiffs) from the definition of human beings, causing immediate harm traceable to S.B. 458,” Missoula County District Court Judge Leslie Halligan ruled.

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The plaintiffs in the case were a group of transgender and intersex residents, some born with genetic conditions producing sex traits found in both male and female individuals.

The state argued that even if a strict definition of male and female didn’t quite encompass everyone, the changes had no tangible effects on the residents.

That was not the case with at least one of the plaintiffs, who was born with XY chromosomes, the judge wrote.

An XY pattern would normally result in a person who is biologically male, but the plaintiff has female genitalia and identifies as a woman. She is a cis woman, but under the S.B. 458 law, she would be forced to identify as male on official documents.

“In essence, the Legislature seeks to permit discrimination against a person whose sex does not align with their gender identity, believing it to be legally distinct from discrimination directed at a person on the basis of sex,” the judge wrote.

She called the law an effort to legalize discrimination and said the state was misrepresenting the plaintiffs’ equal protection claim by dismissing them as “the rare few.”

“Such interpretation would eviscerate the protections built into the Montana Constitution. It has never been the law in this state that a rare few, even if they are ‘despised,’ should lack protection under the law.”

The overreach extended to the plaintiffs’ medical care as well, the judge said.

“When the Legislature ‘thrusts itself into this protected zone of individual privacy under the guise of protecting patient’s health, but, in reality, does so because of prevailing political ideology and the unrelenting pressure from individuals and organizations promoting their own beliefs and values,’ the state is not only infringing on personal autonomy, ‘it is, as well, intellectually and morally indefensible,’” Halligan wrote.

Anna Tellez, one of the plaintiffs in the case, called the decision a win for all Montanans.

“I don’t only see this as a win for gender diverse or intersex Montanans, but for every person who calls Montana home,” she told the Daily Montanan.

“The state cannot overstep its bounds and discriminate against you for arbitrary reasons as it sees fit,” Tellez said. “This fits the most basic philosophy of living in Montana: Mind your own business.”

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