Montana’s Supreme Court asserted requiring citizens to state their true sex on official documents is “discrimination” last week, arguing that doing so would mean “only cisgender Montanans are eligible for birth certificates and driver’s licenses which match their gender identity.”
In a 5-2 decision, the state’s high court blocked enforcement of a law that would require documents such as a birth certificate or a driver’s license to display one’s biological sex, as opposed to allowing trans-identifying individuals to select an inaccurate sex marker on documents to validate their gender confusion and mental illness.
“Transgender discrimination is, by its very nature, sex discrimination,” the majority opinion, authored by Justice Laurie McKinnon, stated. That portion of the decision reads somewhat like the legal roller coaster authored by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch in Bostock v. Clayton County, which injected gender ideology into the definition of “sex” as it pertains to Title VII workplace discrimination.
“Requiring the state to issue false documents simply doesn’t change the reality that men cannot become women, and women cannot become men,” Amanda Braynack, communications director for Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, told The Federalist. “It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that once again the majority of the Montana Supreme Court chose to advance the agendas of their woke political allies rather than evaluate the case on its facts. We should expect this out of California or Colorado, but not Montana.”
The Montana court’s ruling distorted the definition of “sex” entirely to mean the same thing as “gender.” The court’s suggestion that only “cisgender” people would be properly represented on their identifying documents is incorrect for several reasons, but most notably because those the court labels “cisgender” are not identifying with any “gender,” but rather stating the biological fact of their sex.
Each person who claims a “gender identity” that does not comport with his biological sex is inherently drawing the distinction between the definitions of “sex” and “gender.”
Justice Jim Rice makes this issue clear in his dissent, stating the majority opinion “is true only if words are not accorded their true meanings, and assigned new ones, such that sex no longer means biological sex based upon physical science, but rather also means one’s decision to ‘gender identify’ with something other than their birth sex.”
“Certification of birth sex is a historical fact determined by biology; lifestyles lived out pursuant to a decision to ‘gender identify’ are not, and clearly they are not the same thing. Our jurisprudence rests upon this understanding of sex,” Rice continued. “The Court rested its decision on the treatment of ‘same-sex’ and ‘opposite-sex’ couples, which required recognition of sex as an objective, biologically verifiable characteristic that placed people on the same side or opposite side of a biological line. … National jurisprudence reaches the same conclusion, considering sex to be immutable, and not arbitrary, for purposes of equal protection.”
The decision to let Montanans who believe their sex or “gender” is different from their actual sex impose their confusion on the state’s documentation system has far reaching practical effects. Ruling that there should be no daylight between the definitions of “sex” and “gender” undermines any government justification for keeping boys and girls separate in sports. It also means there could be no sex-specific restrooms and locker rooms, dormitory housing, homeless facilities, or prisons.
“If words retain their factual meaning, there is no discrimination at all, because discrimination against transgender Montanans identified by the Court exists only after the Court conflates biological sex with gender identity,” Rice stated.
The temporary injunction stopping Montana from requiring that its citizens choose the accurate sex designation on identifying documents will be maintained as the case goes back down to the lower court to be heard on the merits.
