Minister wins suit over 100-year-old election law

A federal judge in Billings recently granted a permanent injunction preventing Montana from enforcing what the attorney for a Billings minister called a “clergy censorship law.”

A 1913 law that is still promoted on warning posters displayed at polling places states that “no person who is a minister, preacher, priest or other church officer, or who is an officer of any corporation or organization, religious or otherwise, may, other than by public speech or print, urge, persuade or command any voter to vote or refrain from voting for or against any candidate, political party ticket or ballot issue submitted to the people because of his religious duty or the interest of any corporation, church or other organization.”

Calvin Zastrow, an Assemblies of God minister, was never charged with violating the century-old law after he was arrested Feb. 4 while gathering signatures at MetraPark in Billings for an anti-abortion initiative.

Zastrow had declined to move to another location after a MetraPark official told him he was on private property. Yellowstone County sheriff’s deputies arrested him on trespassing charges which were later dropped.

Several weeks later, Zastrow filed suit in federal court claiming state and county officials violated his free speech and other rights. By October, the state attorney general’s office acknowledged that the 1913 law was unconstitutional, but Assistant Attorney General Michael Black, who handled the case, said he didn’t believe it had ever been enforced.

On Oct. 2, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Cebull approved the settlement and granted the preliminary injunction.

“We are very pleased that yet another absurd, anti-free speech Montana election law has been struck down,” Zastrow’s attorney, Matthew Monforton, said. “This means that Cal and other pastors have the same right to engage in the political process that everyone else has.”