Lawyers for

State Rep. Zooey Zephyr of Montana

filed a lawsuit Monday in which she

asked a court to allow her return to the house floor after she was silenced and barred for chiding her Republican colleagues over legislation to restrict gender-affirming health

care and encourage protesters.

The lawsuit was brought by lawyers from the first-term legislature in the South

on behalf of Zephyr, a transgender Democrat representing a liberal district in the college town of Missoula, and several voters who said the lawyers were being denied their right to adequate representation.

Zephyr, whose comments in the Montana legislature have made her a prominent figure on transgender rights and in conversations about dampening dissent in state houses, said in a statement Monday that she and her constituents were targeted because I dared to give a voice to the values. and needs of trans people like myself.

The legal challenge against House Speaker Matt Regier and statehouse Sergeant-at-Arms Bradley Murfitt comes with just days left in the legislature’s biennial session.

A spokesman for Montana Attorney General Atty. Gen. Austin Knudsen, a Republican whose office will defend the case, said the lawsuit was frivolous. This is performance litigation, political activism masquerading as a lawsuit,” said Emily Flower, Knudsen’s press secretary. She added that a court decision that would block Zephyr’s censure by the legislature would violate the separation of powers between the branches of government.

Murfitt said he would not comment on the lawsuit and Regier did not respond to messages asking for comment.

Anna Wong, who lives in Missoula County with her transgender child, supported Zephyr in the 2022 election with the expectation that the legislature would speak out against the onslaught of bills targeting transgender youth. “Suicide among transgender youth is not imaginary,” Wong said. “It’s not a game and it’s not a political foil. It’s real. It’s heartbreaking. And it’s my representative’s responsibility to speak out against bills that promote it.”

Zephyr’s lawyers hoped to get a ruling on their request for a temporary restraining order against Regier and Murfitt as soon as possible. One of the most important pieces of the legislature’s work, finalizing a budget for the next two years, has not yet been completed.

Every minute counts, said Alex Rate, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana and one of Zephyr’s lawyers. Without Zephyr reinstating her full rights and privileges, her 11,000 voters have no voice when it comes to a budget bill that will affect every corner of Montana.

Republicans achieved a supermajority in Montana in the 2022 election and now control two-thirds of the state House and Senate, in addition to the governor’s office. Republicans silenced Zephyr from participating in floor debates on April 18 GOP leaders, under pressure from hardline conservatives, silenced Zephyr from participating in floor debates and demanded her apology two weeks ago,

after she said those who supported a ban on gender-affirming youth care would have blood on their hands. Days later, she defiantly raised her microphone when protesters in the House gallery angrily demanded she be allowed to speak, leading to seven arrests and Zephyr’s banishment from the House floor.

Republicans moved on to Zephyr on the sidelines

closing some meetings of

the two committees she sits on and moving the bills they had to hear to other committees,

Democratic Representative Donavon Hawk said in a statement Democrats said

.

She spent the first day of her exile last week fighting to use a couch in a hallway of the Statehouse. According to the lawsuit, her key card for access to the Capitol entrances, bathrooms, and party workplaces was deactivated.

Zephyr spoke briefly Monday morning at a meeting of the House Judiciary Committee. The entire House minus Zephyr met again in the afternoon. Zephyr cast votes from a snack bar in a state house because several people were sitting on the couch.

Zephyr’s situation echoed the ousting this year of two Tennessee lawmakers from that state’s legislature in protest of gun policies.

In retaliation against Zephyr, Montana Republicans accused her of crossing a line that is vague at best in the political debate. It is not uncommon for legislators dealing with heated issues such as abortion or gun rights to be berated by protesters or even fellow representatives about blood on your hands.

Zephyr lawyers noted previous legal disputes in which courts sided with politicians who made controversial remarks, including a case involving a conservative Oregon lawmaker making covert threats against state police. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled last year that a requirement for Oregon Senator Brian Boquist to give 12 hours’ notice before coming to the Capitol violated his freedom of speech as an elected official and came in retaliation for his words. The lawyers also cited a 1966 U.S. Supreme Court case in which judges sided with Georgia lawmakers who attempted to exclude newly elected lawmaker Julian Bond, who later became NAACP president for endorsing criticism of the Vietnam War.