By Dorothy Bradley, First Published in the Montana Standard and Helena Independent Record on May 3, 2025
Bob Brown and I are the only two living former legislators who served both before and after the passage of Montana’s new Constitution in 1972. Republican and Democrat, life-long Montanans, friends for a half century, we both won our first elections at age 22 in 1970.
Looking back 55 years, I’m astonished that most legislators, including me, didn’t question the old legislative traditions before the new Constitution. It was “business as usual” that no notice of time and place of committee meetings was given to the general public, or when the press was kicked out of committee meetings at a whim, or when the entire House of Representatives would cast unrecorded votes. After passing the Constitution, those practices were no longer OK. And Montana became a better place.
Adoption of the Montana Constitution by its citizens presented an enormous and challenging job to the legislature of implementing its numerous provisions. One example was the Article II, Section 4, “Individual Dignity” clause. Its eloquent and far-reaching language starts: “The dignity of the human being is inviolable.” The remainder gets down to the specifics. “Neither the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate against any person in the exercise of his civil or political rights on account of race, color, sex, culture, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.” Montanans have the broadest, most all-encompassing Constitutional declaration of rights of any citizens in any state in the nation — even more than in the Constitution of the United States. And our human dignity is to be upheld by both public and private sectors.
We needed to make changes in numerous antiquated statutes that had become unconstitutional, and new laws were also needed.
Many statutory inequalities were hidden in dark corners, unknown and forgotten. For example, if you’re going to punish a prostitute, shouldn’t “equal protection” require you also punish the patron of a prostitute? And why could barbers cut women’s hair, but beauty salons couldn’t cut men’s hair? (Wow, have those days ever changed!)
However, most of the focus of the legal changes was on more expected areas of the law. Determining custody of children in a divorce should be based on the best interest of the child — not the gender of the custodial parent. Property division in divorces should recognize the contribution of the spouse in the home. Bank loans should be based on such contribution, collateral and character, not gender.
Sen. Pat Regan, Billings school teacher, proudly carried the bank bill. When her friendly banker told her it wasn’t necessary, she replied, “I remember when I applied for a loan you required my husband, Tom, to co-sign. But when he applied for a loan, you didn’t require me to co-sign.”
A remarkable legislator from Livingston, attorney Dan Yardley, was chair of the legislative committee assigned to write proposals for statutory changes. Dan, a gentle person with a great sense of humor and a brilliant mind, set the tone and moved the Equality of Sexes Committee forward with no fanfare or drama. Legislators, lawyers and citizens alike waded into the details, searching for fairness and practicality.
In the world outside the Legislature, the national battle over the Equal Rights Amendment was raging — featuring hysteria over same-gender bathrooms and the end of the traditional American family. When the dust settled, Montana had ratified the ERA, but it fell one state short of national ratification and was left to languish. But Montana quietly and efficiently passed our own far-reaching Constitutional dignity clause, fleshed out by statutory laws, that provided dignity and equal protection to every citizen, including women.
Dorothy Bradley served as a Montana Representative for 8 sessions including before and after the Constitutional Convention and the passage of the Constitution in 1972. She and her partner, Dan Hurwitz, are retired in Clyde Park. Dorothy is a member of the Board of “Friends of the Montana Constitution.”