Rep. Zooey Zephyr became a lawmaker to make a difference, she said. Specifically, she wanted to stop legislators in Montana from passing anti-LGBTQ bills.
Now, the Montana legislature has voted to discipline her for her conduct on the floor of the House earlier this week. Republicans banned her from the actual House — she can only attend sessions remotely until this legislative session concludes next week.
House leadership and Zephyr have been locked in a battle since April 18 when Zephyr made a fervent plea to her GOP colleagues to reject a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for transgender children in Montana. Republicans, who passed the bill and sent it to Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte to sign, protested, saying the words Zephyr chose were “hateful.”
Since then, House leaders have not allowed Zephyr to speak in the chamber, which led to protests there on Monday.
Here’s what you need to know about Zephyr and how she came to be punished by the Montana legislature:
Zephyr, 34, was elected in 2022, making her the first openly transgender person to be elected to the state legislature in Montana. She has said she wanted to become a lawmaker in 2021 when the Montana legislature passed three bills that restricted LGBTQ rights in one week.
One of the bills prevented transgender people from updating their birth certificates without undergoing gender-affirming surgery. It passed narrowly, 26-24. She told The Washington Post earlier this year that she remembers thinking that if she had been in the room when the bill passed, “I could have changed that heart. I could have been the difference there.”
That was the day she tweeted that she would be running for office.
Before she was elected, Zephyr managed the curriculum and program review process at the University of Montana. The lawmaker also teaches the Lindy Hop, a swing-era dance, in Missoula. She used to play on intramural soccer teams at the university.
Zephyr told The Post that the legislation in Montana did not reflect her own experience in Missoula, where she has been embraced by her community.
“[Missoula] took care of me when I was going through my transition,” she said. “The sense of community here is magical.”
The bill under debate, Senate Bill 99, titled the Youth Health Protection Act by its Republican sponsors, would ban several kinds of gender-affirming care for transgender children, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery needed to treat minors diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
The bill would also threaten gender-affirming care providers with a year-long suspension and potential legal liability. It would prohibit the state’s Medicaid program from paying for any surgical procedures or medication needed for gender-affirming care for transgender children. The state health department said earlier this year that Montana’s Medicaid program had spent nearly $1.4 million since 2015 to cover medication treatment for gender dysphoria for children, averaging about $173,000 a year, according to the Associated Press.
If the governor signs the bill into law, it would take effect on Oct. 1.
Legislators in dozens of states have introduced more than 400 bills targeting trans people since January. At least 29 have become law — more than the total number of such bills passed in all of 2022 in the United States.
Montana this year introduced eight such bills — three have been defeated and four, including SB 99, are advancing through the legislature, according to the ACLU.
The upheaval at the Montana state legislature began last week during a debate on amendments to gender-affirming care measure when Zephyr asked her colleagues to vote against the bill.
Withholding treatment from children struggling with gender identity, she said, amounted to torture and could result in trauma, harm or suicide.
“If you vote yes on this bill, I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” Zephyr said.
The bill passed, despite objections from Democrats, and on the same day, Zephyr’s comments from the debate were dubbed as “hateful rhetoric,” by the Montana Freedom Caucus, a bloc of 21 right-wing state legislators.
The caucus wrote a letter accusing Zephyr of using “inappropriate and uncalled for language during a floor debate.” In the letter, they misgendered Zephyr and demanded her censure.
“When I saw the letter come in, I was proud of what I stood up and said,” Zephyr told The Post last week. “Because I stood up defending my community from what has been just a slew of cruel and harmful policies targeted towards the trans community. That’s what I was elected to do.”
Since then, Republican leaders have declined to recognize Zephyr on the floor, and her microphone has been disabled during debate.
In response to the letter from the caucus, Zephyr and her supporters held a rally at the House on Monday that upended proceedings as people jammed inside the chamber, chanting, “Let her speak!”
House Speaker Matt Regier ordered that the gallery be cleared. Police officers moved in and arrested seven people.
The Montana Freedom Caucus described the protest as an “insurrection” and called for “immediate disciplinary action” against Zephyr. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) said it was the responsibility of Zephyr and other lawmakers “to be civil and to avoid extreme rhetoric and violence.”
On Tuesday, three Republicans in the Montana House — Regier, Speaker Pro Tem Rhonda Knudsen and Majority Leader Sue Vintona — sent another letter, this time addressed only to Zephyr.
The letter said that on Wednesday, the chamber planned to determine whether Zephyr’s conduct Monday during the protests “violated the rules, collective rights, safety, dignity, integrity, or decorum of the House of Representatives,” and whether she should face any “disciplinary consequences for those actions.”
Legislators voted 68-32 to punish Zephyr by banning her from the House floor, anteroom or gallery, for the remainder of the ongoing session, which ends on May 5.
Anne Branigin contributed to this report.