The following docket lists the cases where the ACLU of Montana is either actively litigating a matter or is participating as an amicus or friend of the court. We have also sent out numerous demand letters or letters of inquiry with respect to jail and prison conditions, and you can read about those at our Montana Prison Project page. The Docket is divided into the following main parts that mirror the ACLU of Montana’s Strategic Plan: children's rights, criminal justice reform, First Amendment issues, and privacy and equal protection.
ACTIVE CASES:
CHILDREN'S RIGHTS
Kulstad v. Maniaci. In January 2007, Michelle Kulstad, represented by Susan Ridgeway of Missoula, filed a petition seeking custody of the children that she helped raise with her former partner, Barbara Maniaci, and an equitable distribution of the property Kulstad and Maniaci had acquired during their relationship. The ACLU helped Susan Ridgeway informally with briefing and in persuading the Montana Supreme Court to wait to hear the case until after the trial. The Alliance Defense Fund formally entered the case in the fall of 2007 representing Barbara Maniaci, and began to raise issues of Michelle Kulstad’s legal inability to parent the children. The ADF gave notice that they would bring to trial an expert who would testify that gay parenting is harmful to children. National ACLU then began to actively help on the case, and sought the assistance of Kevin Lewis, an attorney with the Sparer Group in San Francisco, to obtain an expert to counter ADF’s expert. Kevin Lewis and Betsy Griffing formally joined the case in April 2008, and helped Susan Ridgeway at the trial on May 22-23, 2008. On September 29, 2008, the trial court issued its decision in favor of Michelle, finding that she had a parental relationship with the children and that she had an equitable interest in their joint property. The matter is currently on appeal to the Montana Supreme Court. In April 2009, Betsy Griffing presented oral arguments in front of the Supreme Court, telling the Court that Kulstad meets all the criteria set out under Montana law to be a de facto parent. She provided for the day-to-day physical and emotional needs of the children by providing food, shelter, clothing, care, education and discipline; Barbara Maniaci allowed and intended for the parent-child relationship to develop; and it is in the children’s best interests to continue the parent-child relationship with Kulstad.
Read Kulstad’s Appellee Brief
Read District Court Decision
Attorneys:
Susan Ridgeway
Betsy Griffing
Kevin Lewis, Sparer Group
Rose Saxe and Leslie Cooper( National ACLU LGBT Project)
RIGHT OF PRIVACY /EQUAL PROTECTION
Baxter v. State of Montana. Robert Baxter and several other mentally competent, terminally ill patients, as well as a group of physicians, filed a complaint in October 2007 claiming that the patients’ rights of privacy, human dignity and equal protection under the Montana Constitution precluded their being charged with deliberate homicide if the patients chose to seek a prescription for medication to hasten an inevitable death in the face of unrelenting pain and misery at the end of life. Mark Connell, an attorney in Missoula, working with Compassion and Choices, had filed the petition on behalf of the Plaintiffs. In December 2008, the state district court issued its decision declaring the homicide statute unconstitutional as it applied to these plaintiffs and issuing an injunction to preclude charging them with homicide. The State of Montana has appealed the decision and the ACLU of Montana is working with Compassion and Choices to have the district court ruling upheld. ACLU of Montana filed an amicus brief on the case in June 2009. That brief explains tha the Montana Constitution affords citizens a right to privacy, and confirms a right to human dignity. Intertwined these two rights are solid foundations for District Court Judge Dorothy McCarter's decision last fall that patients suffering in the last stages of terminal illness have to right ot make their own medical decisions, in concert with their physicians, on how their lives will end, and to do so without interference from the state. Unfortunately, while the Supreme Court did rule in Baxter's favor, it did so based on Montana statutes. The court did not address the constitutional issues we raised. This issue will now be moving to our public policy work, where we will strive to protect the right to die and keep the legislature from banning it.
Read the Supreme Court opinion
Read our June 2009 amicus brief
Read the complaint
Read the Plaintiff’s Brief in Support of Summary Judgment
Read the Defendant State of Montana’s Brief
Read the District Court Decision
Attorneys:
Mark Connell for the Plaintiffs
Betsy Griffing for amicus ACLU of Montana
CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM:
State of Montana v. Anthony St. Dennis The ACLU has filed an amicus brief on behalf of Anthony St. Dennis because he did not receive fair and adequate representation during his trial for the murder of Forest Salcido, a homeless man in Missoula. Both St. Dennis and Dustin Strahan were tried and convicted of the crime, but Strahan was able to cut a deal for testifying against St. Dennis. The issue at stake here is that attorneys with the Office of the Public Defender represented both men. That is a clear conflict of interest because both attorneys work under one person. The OPD is a single law firm under the Montana Rules for Professional Responsibility, and lawyers within the same firm may not represent clients with conflicting interests. We are also pushing the OPD to fix the conflict issue within the system.
Attorneys:
Betsy Griffing
Colin M. Stephens, Smith and Stephens, Missoula
Robert Doe v. State of Montana The ACLU filed a complaint against the state of Montana and the Montana Department of Corrections in December 2009 on behalf of a 17-year-old who has been incarcerated in the maximum security section of the Montana State Prison since the age of 16, much of that time in solitary confinement. "Robert Doe" suffers from mental illness and has twice tried to commit suicide by biting through his wrist to puncture a vein.
Behavioral Modification Policy
Attorneys:
Jennifer Giuttari, Steven Watt
Andree Larose, Reynolds, Motl & Sherwood, Helena
Bethany Cajune v. Lake County. Bethany Cajune was about five months pregnant when she was incarcerated in the Lake County Jail for traffic violations. She had been undergoing treatment for addiction to painkillers, but the jailers denied her the doctor-prescribed medication she needed to avoid going through withdrawal. Bethany consquently went through severe withdrawal, causing dehydration, nausea and vomiting. She lost 10 pounds in less than two weeks. She feared she would lose her baby. The ACLU of Montana is suing to Lake County on Bethany's behalf.
Attorneys:
Jennifer Giuttari
Diana Kasdan, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
Knows His Gun v. Crossroads Correctional Center. The ACLU brought a human rights complaint in April 2009 against the state of Montana, Crossroads Correctional Center and Corrections Corporation of American on behalf of Native American inmates at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, Mont., whose rights were violated through en-masse strip searches, being denied the ability to properly celebrate sweat lodge ceremonies and being retaliated against when they complained about the mistreatment. The state of Montana investigated the claims and issued a report in May 2009 confirming almost all of the prisoners' allegations. The issue has not been fully resolved.
Read the Complaint
Read the Department of Corrections Report
Attorneys:
Betsy Griffing
Ronald Waterman and Julie Johnson, Gough, Shanahan, Johnson & Waterman, Helena
Langford v. Schweitzer. The ACLU brought a class action suit on behalf of inmates at Montana State Prison following the 1991 riot, challenging numerous areas of mistreatment of inmates at the prison, including lack of medical care, training, rehabilitation programs, work programs, and failure to comply with the American Disabilities Act (ADA). A settlement was reached in 1995, but it required monitoring by experts to assure compliance with the terms of the settlement. By 2005, substantial compliance had been reached on all issues except the prison’s compliance with the ADA. We have been litigating recently how to assess substantial compliance with the ADA as provided in the settlement agreement, and the US District Court Magistrate early in 2008 significantly limited the scope of review of the expert, which we strongly contested. In July 2008, an ADA expert appointed by the Court toured the prison and we are awaiting his report.
Read Settlement
Read Latest Order from Court appointing ADA expert and limiting his scope of inquiry
Attorneys:
Eric Balaban (National ACLU Prison Project)
Betsy Griffing
Jennifer Giuttari
Smith v. Ferriter. In March 2008, co-operating attorneys, Ron Waterman and Julie Johnson from Gough, Shanahan, Johnson and Waterman in Helena, and, Greg Jackson of Helena, filed a petition on behalf of Ronald Allen Smith, challenging the lethal injection procedure in Montana. The petition asserts that the lethal injection procedure used to execute people in Montana is unconstitutional as a violation of cruel and unusual punishment, the right of human dignity and a violation of the Montana constitutional provision on right to know public documents and proceedings. In April 2009, the ACLU of Montana and Ron Waterman, Julie Johnson and Greg Jackson followed up with motion for partial summary judgement calling for the selection criteria and qualifications of executioners be made public under the state's right to know provision so that the public can be informed about whether executioners are qualified to perform the complicated three-step lethal injection procedure.
Read Complaint
Read Answer
Read Motion for Partial Summary Judgment on executioners' qualifications
Attorneys:
Ron Waterman and Julie Johnson, Gough, Shanahan, Johnson and Waterman, Helena.
Greg Jackson, Helena
FIRST AMENDMENT:
Kelly v. Johnson. This voting rights case is based upon First Amendment rights to speak through being able to run for office without undue burdens imposed by the State and to associate through being able to vote for the candidate of your choice. The Plaintiff, Steve Kelly, sought to run for US Senate and was prevented from doing so because of the onerous conditions requiring the gathering of almost 10,000 signatures, a filing fee of almost $2,000, and requiring him to file in March, long before the other general election candidates are known. In March 2008, the ACLU filed a complaint on behalf of Mr. Kelly, challenging the statutory requirements as unconstitutionally burdensome on Mr. Kelly’s right to “ballot access” or being an independent candidate. In October 2008, the US District Court denied our request for a preliminary injunction to place Kelly on the November 2008 ballot. The case is nonetheless going forward on the general unconstitutionality of the statutes defining ballot access. We followed with a motion for summary judgment that the court enter a declaratory judgment that Montana's ballot access law for independent and minor party candidates violates rights guaranteed them under the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The court ruled in February 10 that Kelly did not have legal standing because he did not try to fulfill the requirements to get on the ballot and was thus not harmed. We believe that the burdensome requirements make it almost impossible to get onto the ballot cause harm in and of themselves, and are appealing the decision.
Read Complaint
Read Brief in Support of Motion for Preliminary Injunction
Read District Court Decision on Motion for Preliminary Injunction
Read Motion For Summary Judgment
Read February 2010 Court Order
Attorneys:
Bryan Sells and Laughlan McDonald, ACLU National Voting Rights Project
Betsy Griffing