Editorial written by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial Board
For the second time in less than a month, a Republican-controlled state legislature has blocked a Democratic lawmaker from its chamber, misapplying decorum rules as punishment for policy differences.
The Montana House’s floor ban of a transgender legislator who gave an impassioned speech against a transgender medical ban — like the recent expulsions of two Tennessee House members for protesting gun policies — appears to be the next trend from a political party that has all but declared that it’s done with democracy.
In some ways, the ban from the legislative floor of Democratic Montana Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is transgender, is even less defensible than the earlier expulsion of the two Tennessee lawmakers for participating in a demonstration with gun violence protesters on the House floor.
Zephyr, in contrast, is being punished for speaking.
After a speech last week in which Zephyr accused the ruling Republicans of having “blood on your hands” for banning gender-affirming care for minors, House leaders responded by cutting off her microphone and refusing to let her speak on any issue.
A protest by her supporters resulted in seven arrests, but Zephyr’s own infraction was verbal. When House leadership this week finally gave her permission to address the issue, and she doubled down on her criticism of them, they responded by banishing her from the House floor for the remainder of the current session, citing decorum rules.
Zephyr will be allowed to vote remotely on bills, but the Republicans’ goal — to silence a voice of dissent during legislative debate — has been achieved.
The episode sends a chilling message about the GOP’s growing contempt for the norms of democracy.
Republican supermajority legislatures have decided they can violate those norms with impunity, whether to avoid blame for mass shootings spurred by the GOP’s bullheaded refusal to consider even the mildest gun-safety legislation, or to ensure that their politically driven persecution of transgender medical care isn’t called out as the cynical and dangerous demagoguery that it is.
This strain of anti-democracy is spreading through statehouses in other ways as well.
In Missouri, ruling Republicans have flouted the will of the voters repeatedly on issues like Medicaid expansion and political reform. And they are currently attempting to make the voters’ will more difficult to express through ballot referendums — because they know most Missourians disagree with their draconian new abortion ban and would vote it down if given the chance.
The Montana episode also drives home just how situational this sudden GOP obsession with “decorum” is.
This is the party, after all, that was just fine with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert heckling a president throughout a State of the Union speech, and which continues to downplay the seriousness of the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
The party of Donald Trump is in no position to lecture anyone about decorum.
