The Montana legislature has spent the last several years crusading against the justices of the Montana Supreme Court for their insufficient dedication to Republican partisanship. After failing to convince the court that Republicans are entitled to enact voter suppression laws, abortion bans, and limitations on gender-affirming medical care for youth, the legislature has taken a different tack: trying to drive uncooperative justices from office.
Montana Supreme Court justices are elected in nonpartisan elections and serve eight-year terms, but in the case of a mid-term retirement or other removal from office, the governor may appoint a successor to complete the term. Although the current court is not particularly liberal, it has in several notable cases relied on the state constitution and prior precedent to strike down episodes of Republican overreach.
As a result, beginning in 2021, Republican lawmakers responded by filing dozens of ethics complaints and issuing subpoenas against almost every justice on the court, attempting to discredit them in their reelection campaigns or remove them from office altogether. However, the Judicial Standards Commission, which considers ethics complaints against judicial officers, rejected all of them. For example, one complaint alleged that the entire Montana Supreme Court should have recused from a case regarding judicial selection, since it affects their own elections. As the commission pointed out, such a finding would make any legislative changes to the structure of the judiciary effectively unreviewable in court, thus putting courts forevermore at the legislature’s mercy.
In 2024, Republican legislators formed a special committee to strategize about how to rein in their “out of control” Supreme Court, ultimately putting together a package of 27 bills aimed at the judiciary. Ideas included switching from non-partisan to partisan judicial elections, immunizing courts-related legislation from judicial review, changing from statewide judicial elections to regional ones subject to gerrymanders, and more. They even proposed recording video and publishing all judicial deliberations for the public, removing the ability of judges to candidly discuss cases without political pressure.
All of these bills either failed to pass or were vetoed by Republican Governor Greg Gianforte. However, the legislature did manage to make a crucial change to the Judicial Standards Commission that had thwarted Republicans’ earlier efforts to remake the court. Previously, state law required the JSC to consist of two district court judges elected by their colleagues, one attorney appointed by the Supreme Court and confirmed by the state senate, and two non-lawyers selected by the governor and confirmed by the senate. But a new law passed in 2023 stripped the Supreme Court justices and district court judges of all appointment authority and replaced them with the speaker of the state house and the attorney general.
As a result, today’s JSC looks very different. The speaker appointed Dan Wilson, a conservative candidate for a Supreme Court seat in 2026, and the attorney general appointed Emily Jones, his own special assistant and a former Republican political consultant. Together with Republican legislators Seth Berglee and Roger Webb, Wilson and Jones give Republicans a solid majority on the five-member commission. Sure enough, in August 2025, Senator Barry Usher, chair of the Judiciary Committee, filed an ethics complaint against Justice Laurie McKinnon. McKinnon is no liberal firebrand, but she is the only sitting justice to vote to overturn abortion restrictions and GOP-led voter suppression laws against whom Republicans had not already filed complaints.
The wildest part is that the majority of the recent complaints filed against McKinnon are the same as the ones previously filed against other justices that the old JSC already dismissed. And they are not merely similar, but are rather almost verbatim copies, even down to an identical typo (“rescues” rather “recuse”). Usher is so confident of success under the new JSC that he barely even tried.
That said, Usher has reason to be optimistic here. By controlling the body that hears ethics complaints, Republicans are hoping to manufacture a steady drip of scandals targeting justices who stand in the way of their policy agenda. Even if the JSC ultimately stops short of removing those judges, the constant barrage of investigations undermines their credibility and burdens them with defending themselves against nonsense. Eventually, the Republican governor can fill vacancies created through retirement, resignation, or removal with people handpicked not for their qualifications, but for their loyalty.
If the 6-3 U.S. Supreme Court has demonstrated anything, it is that selecting judges is tantamount to deciding cases. Montana Republicans watched as the far-right takeover of the Court allowed Republicans to achieve policy victories they could never have secured democratically. The lesson Montana Republicans took from all this was that by bringing their highest court to heel, too, they could impose more of their agenda on everyone else, no matter what the Montana Constitution says about it.
