Don't Tread on Montana

Just four days before FBI Director Robert Mueller and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez were urging the U.S. Senate to renew and possibly strengthen expiring portions of the USA PATRIOT ACT on Tuesday, April 5, the Montana Legislature was sending an entirely different message to the federal government: Enough already.

Montana opposition to the Patriot Act began shortly after the Act was passed in the wake of 9/11. Critics of the Act have contended that their opposition is driven by support for the Bill of Rights and Americans' civil liberties, not partisan politics. That message has apparently resonated with Montana's legislature, which has just passed the most strongly-worded statewide anti-Patriot Act resolution of any state so far by an overwhelming margin of 40-10 in the Montana Senate and 87-12 in the state House.

The resolution, SJ 19, was carried in the House by a conservative, Rep. Rick Maedje, a Republican from Fortine, Mont. and was sponsored in the Senate by Sen. Jim Elliot, a Democrat from Trout Creek.

Nationally, 372 cities and counties and five states have adopted anti-Patriot Act resolutions, including Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Vermont-and now Montana. Legislators and activists in 14 additional states are currently working toward passing statewide resolutions, according to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

The Montana resolution states that the Patriot Act allows the federal government “to more liberally detain and investigate citizens and to engage in surveillance activities that may violate or offend the rights and liberties guaranteed by our state and federal constitutions.”

SJ 19 was drafted by Helena, Mont. resident Paul Edwards, a film and television writer whose credits include episodes of “Gunsmoke,” “Knight Rider” and “21 Jump Street,” and a political organizer who managed Dennis Kucinich's 2004 presidential campaign in Montana.

Edwards says the bill was modeled after Alaska's version, but that Montana's resolution goes above and beyond predecessors by adding accountability measures “so that Montana officials will not be asked by the federal government to do things which are patently in opposition to our own constitution.”

The 1972 Montana State Constitution contains a “right to privacy” clause that has been interpreted as providing an added level of protection to that guaranteed by the federal Constitution.

Among SJ 19's provisions are the following: a general directive that the war on terrorism not be fought at the expense of essential civil rights and liberties granted under the U.S. Constitution; directives that local law agents not gather, record or share information that would violate constitutionally guaranteed civil rights or civil liberties; an instruction that schools let students know if their records have been obtained by law enforcement agents under the Patriot Act; an instruction for public libraries to post in a prominent place a notice indicating that book borrowing records may be seized by federal agents and that a librarian is prohibited from telling a library patron of such a seizure; a section requiring Montana's attorney general to periodically release data on how many arrests have been made and how much surveillance-of electronics, school records, library and bookstore records-has been conducted within the state under the Patriot Act; a provision requiring libraries to periodically destroy book borrowing records; a directive to ultimately allow the Patriot Act to expire and another to encourage the Montana congressional delegation to oppose the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, otherwise known as Patriot Act II.

“Most of our big cities have now passed these resolutions. Except for Billings, we've pretty much got them all,” Edwards says.