For decades, Montana courts and the Montana Legislature have understood that bill drafts and related documents—often called a bill’s “junque file”—are subject to public disclosure under the Montana Constitution’s fundamental right to know. 

But secrecy is seductive. In September 2024, Defendants Jerry Howe and the Montana Legislative Services Division adopted a policy that affirmatively withholds legislator communications about the bill drafting process from the public. The policy purports to rely on a decision from Montana’s First Judicial District that recognized—in the context of a civil discovery dispute—an unprecedented form of legislative privilege.

On October 30, 2024, Plaintiffs David Saslav, Kaylee Hafer, and the Montana Environmental Information Center asked the Court to order Legislative Services to produce the requested junque file documents, to enjoin Legislative Services from denying right to know requests on the basis of legislative privilege, and to declare that all materials and correspondence used to draft bills, including bill drafts, are public documents subject to the right to know. On December 6, 2024, a group of Montana media organizations intervened in support of the Plaintiffs.

On January 21, 2025, the Court found that Legislative Services has a clear legal duty to produce these documents in full and that the new policy of withholding documents related to bill drafting likely violates the public’s fundamental right to know. The court ordered Legislative Services to produce Plaintiffs’ requested bill drafts and prohibited Legislative Services from enforcing its secrecy policy going forward, pending final resolution of the lawsuit.