Court: Montana ballot law violated church’s rights|Point of View
HELENA (AP) — A federal appeals court says a Montana election law was unconstitutionally applied to an East Helena church that supported a 2004 ballot initiative to define marriage.
Wednesday’s ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals chided the state for its “petty bureaucratic harassment” of the Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church.
There was no immediate reply to a request for comment from Montana’s attorney general.
The appeals court ruled the state violated the church’s First Amendment rights when Montana’s commissioner of political practices at the time, Gordon Higgins, ruled the church became an “incidental campaign committee,” that must report its expenditures to the state, because the church supported a 2004 constitutional initiative defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
