Montana state House lawmakers voted Wednesday to block the floor speech of Rep. Zooey Zephyr (D) after she protested a ban on gender-affirming care last week.
The 68-32 vote means that Zephyr will only be allowed to take part in state business remotely by voting for the duration of the two-year legislative term.
“Freedom in this body involves obedience to all the rules of this body, including the rules of decorum,” Republican Majority Leader Sue Vinton said Wednesday, making the motion for the vote.
Zephyr retorted in her defense ahead of the vote that the House was using “decorum as a tool of oppression.”
She further asserted that the House has “systematically attacked” the LGBTQ community in the legislation passed. “We have seen bills targeting our art forms, our books, our history, and our health care.”
Zephyr, who is transgender, had rebuked the gender-affirming care ban during a Republican-majority House session Tuesday a week ago, saying, “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer you see the blood on your hands.”
“I was not being hyperbolic,” Zephyr said on Wednesday ahead of the vote. “I was speaking to the real consequences that we as legislators take in this body.”
She stated that she’s had friends who have “taken their lives” because of the House’s anti-LGBTQ legislation, and heard from a family who’s transgender teenager had “attempted to take her life while watching a hearing on one of the anti-trans bills.”
So, she stated, when the House Speaker asked her to be silent and not speak out against “bills that get us killed….He’s asking me to be complicit in this legislature’s eradication of our community. But I refused to do so and I will always refuse to do so.”
Other lawmakers noted that House business had to stop while Zephyr “actively participated in the disruption” of the chamber.
On Monday, Zephyr had raised her microphone toward demonstrators who interrupted the proceedings for nearly half an hour in protest of House leaders denying her the chance to speak. At that point, Zephyr had not spoken on the House floor for nearly a week—since making her “blood on your hands” remark.
On Wednesday, Zephyr insisted that the protesters had been “peaceful” and not a threat to the safety of the legislature, as Vinton had earlier asserted.
Zephyr’s punishment is part of a recent debate in the U.S. about governance and who gets to have a voice in democracy.
“Republicans are doubling down on their agenda of running roughshod over Montanans’ rights—to free expression, to peaceful protest, to equal justice under the law,” said House Minority Leader Kim Abbott (D) on Tuesday.
Ahead of Wednesday’s vote Abbott noted that she had mentioned “other paths” that the House could have taken, rather than punishing Zephyr. She added, “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean it’s the right choice.”
But Montana state House Speaker Matt Regier (R) told reporters Tuesday, “The choice to not follow the House rules is one that Rep. Zephyr has made. The only person silencing Rep. Zephyr is Rep. Zephyr. The Montana House will not be bullied.”
