The Treasure State of Montana has adopted the Uniform Public Expression Protection Act (“UPEPA”). The UPEPA passed the Montana House by a vote of 96-1 and in the Senate by a vote of 50-0. This follows the similar unanimous passage of the UPEPA in Ohio and Idaho and speaks volumes for the quality of the UPEPA as an out-of-the-box Anti-SLAPP law for states not having an Anti-SLAPP law or looking to replace a bad one.
Peter Russo of the Institute for Free Speech put out a statement that:
“This achievement represents years of advocacy and marks a dramatic improvement in Montana’s free speech landscape. As you may recall from our previous report, Montana was among the worst states for SLAPP vulnerabilities. The 2015 case against the Billings Gazette – sued merely for filing a public records request about potential mishandling of public funds – demonstrated precisely why these protections were so urgently needed.
“We extend our deepest gratitude to State Representatives Tom Millett (R-Marion) and James Reavis (D-Billings) for their bipartisan sponsorship, Governor Gianforte for signing it into law, and all our coalition partners – the ULC, press organizations, civil liberties groups, and grassroots activists – who worked tirelessly across party lines to make this possible.
“With this legislation, Montana has transformed from having the weakest anti-SLAPP protections in the nation to joining the ranks of the strongest defenders of free speech in America.”
Montana’s adoption of the UPEPA now makes 11 states which have adopted the UPEPA. This means that the UPEPA now constitutes just over one-third of all the Anti-SLAPP laws in the United States. Of the remainder, 28 states and territories (including the District of Columbia and Guam) have their own organic Anti-SLAPP laws, and 15 states and territories have no Anti-SLAPP laws at all.
This legislative term, the UPEPA has been introduced in the legislatures of 10 other states and apparently is close to passage in a couple of those states. Fingers crossed.
I have not seen the final bill signed into law in Montana, but I have been told that the UPEPA was passed with only minor amendments. We’ll have to wait to see what those are. As I have previously mentioned, some minor variations by the states which have adopted the UPEPA are actually welcomed, as those states can then act as test tubes to see what works or doesn’t. These experiences will be important at some distant time when a revised UPEPA will be considered.
For those not familiar with the UPEPA, it is an Anti-SLAPP law that protects freedom of expression and other constitutional rights by essentially moving summary judgment from its normal habitat at the end of litigation to the start of the litigation so that meritless cases are disposed at the outset. While some other states have Anti-SLAPP laws that are as effective in doing this (and, in fact, the UPEPA was modeled after some of those laws, predominantly California and Texas), the UPEPA quite uniquely offers the additional benefit of uniformity of interpretation. This latter benefit allows the courts of the UPEPA states to rely on the each other’s court decisions as needed.
As 2025 has been a good year for UPEPA adoptions, we’ll hope that the good fortune continues.
Read the full article here