Montana Gov. Gianforte signed SB518, requiring parental permission for affirming pronouns and enabling forced outing of trans students

On May 19, 2023, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed Senate Bill 518 into law, a "parental rights" measure sponsored by state Sen. Theresa Manzella (R-Hamilton); the legislature assigned the bill its chapter number three days later, on May 22. The enacted law requires school personnel to obtain written parental permission before using a name or pronoun for a student that does not align with the student's sex, and it protects staff who decline to use a student's affirmed pronouns from discipline. The law also bars schools from withholding from parents information about a child's physical, emotional, or mental health, including gender-identity-related information.

Advocacy groups and educators warned that the disclosure provision enables schools to out transgender and non-binary students to their families without the student's consent, and that conditioning the use of an affirming name or pronoun on parental permission singles those students out for differential treatment. The Senate had passed the bill on a party-line vote before it reached the governor. The Human Rights Campaign characterized SB518 as a bill that "would allow schools to misgender and forcibly out transgender and non-binary students."

SB518 was signed the same week as Senate Bill 458, the so-called "LGBTQ Erasure Act" defining sex as a fixed binary, and House Bill 676, allowing parents to withdraw students from lessons they object to. SB458 is a separate enactment recorded on its own terms and is not the subject of this entry.