Senate Bill 43, sponsored by Senator Daniel Emmerich, would narrow the scope of injunctive relief in Montana courts so that a court’s injunction could not restrain enforcement of a statute against nonparties. The bill drew strong opposition from civil liberties groups and trial lawyers who said the change would undercut statewide protections and multiply litigation.

Senator Emmerich described the bill as an attempt to ensure injunctions are “narrowly tailored as possible” and said recent practice had sometimes extended orders to nonparties. He said the bill was modeled on federal proposals and that an amendment under consideration would exclude the Montana Supreme Court from the bill’s limits so that only district-court injunctions would be constrained. Under the sponsor’s explanation, a district court could still issue relief for parties in a case, and parties could appeal to the Montana Supreme Court to seek statewide relief.

Opponents warned of the practical and legal consequences of the change. Henry Seaton of the ACLU of Montana said restricting injunctions to named parties would be “a direct attack on the court’s duty to protect our constitutional rights” and would require “thousands upon thousands” of individual lawsuits in some hypothetical cases. Al Smith for the trial lawyers association said the change would push litigants toward class actions or produce uneven judgments across districts; he pointed to past county-level rulings that applied to all businesses in a county and said the proposed change would require separate suits for businesses not named in an original case.

Committee members discussed a conceptual amendment that would keep the Montana Supreme Court’s ability to issue statewide injunctions while limiting district-court orders to the parties in the case. Sponsors and some members said the amendment was meant to preserve a path to statewide relief via appeal; opponents argued the amendment would not mitigate the core problem the bill creates because appeals can take months and the underlying legal effects would vary by district during litigation.

No committee vote was recorded at the hearing. The record shows robust opposition testimony and ongoing committee-level discussion about an amendment to exclude the Montana Supreme Court from the bill’s limits.