Montana Senate Examines Bill to Make Judicial Races Partisan
"It's very difficult for people to discern and find out anything about who they're trying to elect"
The Montana Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing last week for Senate Bill (SB) 42, which seeks to provide partisan elections for Montana judicial races.
SB 42 would allow judicial candidates to accept endorsements from political parties and contributions from joint fundraising committees.
During the hearing on Thursday, January 16, State Senator Daniel Emrich (R-Great Falls) said that SB 42 “will open up an opportunity for Montanans to participate in judicial elections at a level they haven’t in quite a long time.”
Emrich told The Montana Chronicles this bill is “pursuing citizens’ right to know and inform their decisions.”
“It's not trying to make things politically one way or the other. It is literally just to inform voters,” he said.
SB 42 says the Montana Legislature gets numerous comments from people saying they have “insufficient information” about who to vote for in judicial elections.
Emrich told The Chronicles that when he first ran for State Senate in 2023, one of the questions that always occurred was who to vote for in the judicial races.
“They wanted to know who I supported because they're like, ‘I don't know who to vote for because there's no information out there on where they stand on issues [or] how they're going to interpret the law,’” he said.
Emrich said the public should have information about judges “to make an informed decision when they vote.”
“It's very difficult for people to discern and find out anything about who they're trying to elect,” he said. “People have the right to vote, and they also have the right to know who they're voting for.”
The bill says that, currently, the judicial candidates “are barred from party primaries,” which reduces the public scrutiny of the individuals. In addition, this piece of legislation says that the lack of party labels allows “special interest groups” to influence these elections.
Emrich told The Chronicles that the “large majority” of funding for Montana judicial races comes from trial lawyers.
The state senator stated that trial lawyers “have an interest to get a judge elected” that will be potentially friendly to their cases.
“Trial lawyers will donate a tremendous amount of money to these races, and then the judges get elected,” he said. “The judge that the trial lawyer is pushing the most in the media and gets the most name recognition oftentimes wins the race.”
Former law professor Rob Natelson previously told The Chronicles that the Montana Supreme Court “hardly qualifies as being a court at all.”
Emrich said the judicial problems Montana faces are not only at the Montana Supreme Court.
“It’s kind of a holistic problem,” he said.
The state senator said Montana’s lower courts are “just as important” as the Montana Supreme Court.
Emrich said all the lower court decisions in Montana inform the decisions of the state Supreme Court.
Opponents of this bill also spoke at the hearing.
State Senator James Reavis (D-Billings), who is a public defender, said that “partisanship doesn’t bring out the best in us.”
“ Partisan judges won’t bring fairness and partiality to the law; they will bring partisanship to our everyday lives.”
Al Smith, the Montana Trail Lawyers Association executive director, said his organization wants judges who “are fair and impartial.”
“Party affiliation should have nothing to do with the judicial system.”
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Zachery Schmidt is the founder of The Montana Chronicles. If you have any tips, please send them to montanachronicles@proton.me.