Montana's House just voted to censure its first openly transgender lawmaker after protests and days of not letting her speak

• The Montana House of Representatives voted to censure its first transgender legislator.
• State Rep. Zooey Zephyr was censured days after protestors interrupted the legislature because the House speaker wouldn't recognize her on the floor.

In a party-line vote, Montana's Republican-led state legislature voted on Wednesday to censure Democratic state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, Montana's first openly transgender woman legislator. In doing so, Zephyr will not be allowed on the House floor or gallery for the remainder of the legislative session.

Speaking on the House floor before the vote on Wednesday, Zephyr said the Montana legislature has "systematically" attacked the LGBTQ community, which is why she previously admonished the Republican-led legislature for pushing through a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors on April 18.

"We have seen bills targeting our art forms, our books, our history, and our healthcare," Zephyr said Wednesday. "And I rose up in defense of my community that day speaking to the harms that these bills bring and that I have firsthand experience knowing about."

Tensions are high amid a spate of legislation targeting trans rights

Prior to Wednesday, Montana's Speaker Matt Regier refused to allow Zephyr to speak on the House floor until she apologized for previously shaming the legislature. On Wednesday, she once again refused to apologize.

"When the speaker asks me to apologize on behalf of decorum, what he is really asking me to do is be silent when my community is facing bills that get us killed," Zephyr said. "He's asking me to be complicit in this legislature's eradication of our community and I refuse to do so, and I will always refuse to do so."

State Rep. SJ Howell, a Democratic legislator who is nonbinary, spoke in support of Zephyr on Wednesday and said the protests on Monday were unsurprising.

"It is deeply unsurprisingly to me that the community responded the way it did," Howell said. "It's not just one of our own that has been silenced. It happened after a session where bills have targeted us, struggling for equal treatment under the law."

Following Tennessee's playbook

Expulsion and censure, generally reserved for only the most severe violations of conduct in legislatures, have recently been adopted as more routine punishments in states where the GOP controls a significant majority.

Zephyr's censure comes weeks after the Republican-led Tennessee legislature voted to expel two of its members, Rep. Justin Pearson and Rep. Justin Jones, for leading a protest on the state House floor to advocate for gun reform.

Pearson and Jones have both been reinstated to their positions in the state legislature, and their initial expulsions have led to them becoming national figures, leading even to a meeting at the White House.

A member of the Republican National Committee from Tennessee recently lamented the Republican Party in the state's decision to expel the members as they said it "energized young voters against us."

Now, after Zephyr's censure, a similar problem could occur for Montana Republicans as Zephyr increasingly gets placed into the spotlight.