"Because the decision rests entirely on the Montana Constitution, it is insulated from the U.S. Supreme Court. Under the principle of adequate and independent state grounds, the federal Supreme Court cannot review a state court's interpretation of its own constitution, so long as that constitution provides more protection than the federal one. [...] What this means in practice is that Montana's transgender residents now have a constitutional shield completely independent of the Supreme Court of the United State’s decisions."

Be specific about what ruling you're talking about if you send a letter, and be prepared to answer questions about the ruling if you call. The person answering phones or reading and summarizing your letter for the legislator will NOT be up to date on all the many things happening in different states and will likely need context to understand and correctly pass on your petition.

I'm not sure how to clearly communicate this ruling beyond "Kalarchik v. State of Montana," but maybe write yourself 2-3 short bullet points about how/why it's a fairly ironclad protection and what the benefit is to the residents of your state (what exactly it defends against, i.e. vague bills that can be enforced against trans people in many ways while being framed as a simple "bathroom safety" measure or whatever).

Uh... what else. Oh! Yeah:

When I say, "This is something people can call/write to their state reps about," I mean you.

🫵🏼 You're people.

If you 🫵🏼 don't do this, chances are no one will, and it won't even be a thought that crosses most legislators' minds, no matter how progressive they generally are. You can put that thought in their minds. If enough people (yous) push (repeatedly, stubbornly) for these things, you (people) can pressure that thought nearer the forefront of their priorities, past any other ideas they've got that may be well-meaning but not strong enough to endure a change in power or explicit enough to defend edge-cases.

If you're worried about being bad on the phone or bad at writing letters, I assure you they get many, many, many calls and letters from people far more incoherent and uninformed than you, often petitioning for measures outright harmful to you and the people you care about, but the staff still listens to them politely (fyi: mostly in silence bc they're busy taking notes) and passes those petitions on.

Different states have different mechanisms for selecting supreme court justices.

SHE NEVER QUITS!!!!

> Elisabeth Bik is on patreon <

what do I mean by this? here's an example. when my surgery is delayed multiple times, I spend a little time looking up (there is only one surgeon in the entire area who will perform this surgery on trans people, so every trans person's surgical timeline is bottle-necked and delayed by months every time he goes to a conference or takes a vacation or experiences an injury. in other words, if I was cis, I would not encounter this difficulty in accessing surgery). and then I spend time looking down (due to nonstop harassment and legal threats, this practice now only treats adults and will no longer perform surgeries on minors. in other words, my access to surgery is predicated on adult privilege I have at the direct expense of trans youth's lack of access).

our lives matter more than your fucking nostalgia.