Montana House Votes to Discipline Transgender Lawmaker

Republicans hold a supermajority in both the State House and Senate, and one conservative family from Flathead Valley in particular, the Regiers, wields great influence over both chambers. Keith Regier is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee; his daughter, Amy, is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, and his son, Matt, is the speaker of the House who has repeatedly refused to recognize Ms. Zephyr’s requests to speak on the floor.

The number of transgender and nonbinary people elected to public office nationally increased to at least 70 this year, from 25 in 2019, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which supports those candidates. Of those officials, there are 14 sitting state legislators who are transgender or nonbinary, said Elliot Imse, the executive director of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute, which is affiliated with the fund.

If the Montana House votes to censure Ms. Zephyr, he said, two of those 14 will have been formally censured. (The other is Representative Mauree Turner of Oklahoma, a nonbinary lawmaker who was censured last month after inviting a protester into their office; leaders of the state House said the lawmaker had harbored a fugitive wanted for questioning.)

Mr. Imse noted it was unusual for state legislatures to censure lawmakers. “That one in seven of our trans and nonbinary state legislators have been targeted is pure politics,” he said.

Over the past few years, Republican state lawmakers have introduced a wave of bills to regulate the lives of transgender youths by restricting the bathrooms they can use, the sports teams they can join and medical care they can receive.

These efforts have been particularly aggressive since start of the 2023 legislative season. This year, 11 states have passed laws prohibiting what’s known as gender-affirming care for young people. Before this year, just three state legislatures had enacted full or partial bans.

On Tuesday, Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, signed a bill limiting transgender people’s use of certain restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities that align with their gender identity.

And in Missouri, an unusually restrictive rule that would limit transgender care for adults, as well as for adolescents, could go into effect as soon as Thursday unless it is blocked by a judge.