Montana Republicans bar transgender lawmaker from the statehouse floor

Under the terms of the punishment, Zephyr will still be able to vote remotely. The Democratic representative had been forbidden from speaking for the past week over her comments, which Republicans said violated decorum.

The decision to silence Zephyr had already drawn protests that brought the statehouse to a halt on Monday as demonstrators demanded Zephyr be allowed to speak.

In Montana, Republicans said they would not let the Missoula lawmaker speak unless she apologized for her remarks last week on the proposed ban, which she refused to do. Conservative Republicans have repeatedly misgendered Zephyr since the remarks, deliberately using incorrect pronouns to describe her.

The events have sent shockwaves through Missoula, a liberal college town where 80% of voters sent the first openly trans legislator in state history to the state capital.

Montana has long leaned to the right, but with more of a libertarian bent than a zest for culture wars. That allowed Democrats to win the governorship regularly for decades, and occasionally to win control of one or more houses of the legislature.

Andy Nelson grew up in a town of 750 people in eastern Montana, and only felt comfortable coming out as gay in his senior year of college at the University of Montana in Missoula, when he volunteered at the Center, a local LGBTQ+ community group where he is now executive director. He remembered long discussions wondering whether such a group was still necessary after gay marriage was legalized nationally in 2015. But that all changed in 2016, with the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump.

Cork has been traveling to the state capitol in Helena to speak against the legislation affecting trans people since it was first introduced. After Zephyr was silenced, he joined dozens of others from Missoula at the capitol earlier this week.