On October 15, 2025, the National Women’s Law Center, alongside 16 other Montana-based and national organizations working to support survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, and gender-based violence, filed an amicus brief before the Montana Supreme Court in Perkins v. State of Montana. The case challenges H.B. 121, a comprehensive facilities ban passed by the Montana Legislature in March 2025 that would deny transgender people access to restrooms, changing facilities, and sleeping quarters that are consistent with their gender identity.

NWLC’s brief highlights the specific impacts of H.B. 121 on access to domestic violence shelters and safe houses. We explain that exclusionary policies chill access to life-saving services for transgender people—who are at disproportionate risk of facing gender-based violence—while exacerbating gender policing that also harms cisgender women and girls who do not conform to inappropriate gender stereotypes. H.B. 121’s sweeping provisions—including creating a private cause of action that allows anyone to sue a domestic violence shelter for a failure of monitoring bathroom use—creates new and burdensome liabilities that could reduce access to services for the general population.

NWLC was joined in this brief by the Montana Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Sanders County Coalition for Families, American Sexual Health Association, Coalition of Labor Union Women AFL-CIO, Feminist Majority Foundation, Forge, Inc., Freedom Network USA, Just Solutions, National Association of Women Lawyers, National LGBTQ Institute on Intimate Partner Violence, National Network to End Domestic Violence, National Organization for Women Foundation, National Women’s Shelter Network, Inc., Nurses for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Public Counsel, and Women’s Law Project.

Read the amicus brief here.