Case: Donaldson v. State of Montana

Plaintiffs are private individuals in committed same-sex relationships who brought suit against the State of Montana in 2010 complaining that they are unable to obtain various benefits available to opposite-sex, married couples. Represented by the ACLU, plaintiffs expressly challenged only the benefits aspects of marriage-like relationships, and did not seek the right to marry or recognition of their relationships as marriages.

The State District Court denied Plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and granted Defendant's motion to dismiss on the grounds that Plaintiffs had failed to specify exactly which statutes they are challenging, and thus a declaratory judgment on the constitutionality of such alleged discrimination would exceed the bounds of judicial power. The Montana Supreme Court, CJ Mike McGrath, upheld the judgment on this rationale, but remanded the case to the State District Court to allow for amendment of the complaint in line with the dismissal of their claims. 292 P.3d 364.

The case was decided 4-3, with the three dissenting justices (J. James C. Nelson) declaring this case to be the most important civil rights case to come before the Montana Supreme Court in decades. The dissent was extensive, covering over a hundred pages. The dissent first argued against the majority’s conclusion, instead proposing to grant a declaratory judgment stating that Montana benefits and other law regarding married couples is discriminatory and unconstitutional. Specifically, given the history of discrimination against and oppression of LGBTQ+ individuals in Montana, the dissent argued that sexual orientation was a suspect class under Montana’s Equal Protection Clause. Therefore, laws discriminating based on sexual orientation would need to survive strict scrutiny, which the laws at issue in this case did not. The dissent also questioned whether the Montana law limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples was an unconstitutional injection of Christian values into what was supposed to be a secular state constitution.

Back in the District Court, plaintiffs filed a first amended complaint on July 13, 2013. They added reference to specific Montana statutes which exclude plaintiffs from: receiving various types of financial protection; designating partners as beneficiaries; having authority over end-of-life decisions; and dissolution-of-relationship protections. They add that Montana's statutory definition of marriage "casts uncertainty on Plaintiffs' ability to protect their partners and their relationships and also stigmatizes their relationships." They claim that plaintiffs are excluded from those protections because they are prohibited from entering into marriage by the Montana Constitution, but specify that they do not seek the designation of marriage; rather they "simply seek statutory protections that are offered by the State to similarly situated different-sex couples and their families through the legal status of marriage."

In July 2014, the plaintiffs filed a motion for summary judgment on their equal protection and related fundamental rights claims. However, before the District Court could rule on plaintiffs’ motion, the United States District Court for the District of Montana ruled in Rolando v. Fox on November 19, 2014 that Montana’s ban on same-zex marriage violated the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. The following year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges on June 26, 2015 that the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution prohibits states from banning same-sex marriage.

Following these two decisions, the District Court dismissed this case as moot on August 26, 2015, as plaintiffs in this case could now legally marry and receive the legal benefits that they had been arguing for. This case is now closed.