One of our very own Hellgate students, Sam Silverberg, has provided a summarized version of bills that either might affect Hellgate Students or bills they might be interested in learning about, to help make these often complicated bills more accessible to everyone!  These current bills have recently passed both houses of the legislature and will become Montana law.

House Bill 572

Sponsor: Derek Skees

• Montana school marshal program
• “A school marshal may act only as necessary to prevent or stop the commission of an offense that threatens serious bodily injury or death of persons on public school property.”
• Does not exempt marshal from carrying a concealed weapon in public.

House Bill 98

Sponsor: Sharon Stewart Peregoy

• The extension of the Missing Indigenous Persons Task Force and the grant program it administers.
• Work to identify causes that contribute to missing and murdered indigenous persons and make recommendations to federally recognized tribes in the state to reduce cases of missing and murdered indigenous persons.
• The program is established to create a network in support of efforts by Montana tribes to identify, report, and find Native American persons who are missing.

House Bill 136

Sponsor: Lola Sheldon-Galloway

• Prohibits the abortion of an unborn child capable of feeling pain.
• A bill enacting that, “An unborn child is capable of feeling pain when it has been determined by the medical practitioner performing or attempting the abortion or by another medical practitioner on whose determination the medical practitioner relies that the probable gestational age of the unborn child is 20 or more weeks.”

House Bill 218

Sponsor: Mike Hopkins

• A law that furthers student’s rights to free speech and its protection in universities.
• Expressive activity protected that includes but is not limited to any lawful oral, written, audiovisual, or electronic means by which individuals may communicate ideas to one another, including all forms of peaceful assembly, protests, speeches, guest speakers, distribution of printed materials, carrying signs, and circulating petitions. 

Would you like to see more information like the whole bill or how the bill is faring in the Montana Legislature?  Please visit the Montana Legislature's website for more information!