Montana ruling against church to be appealed

EAST HELENA, Mont. — Attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) say they will appeal a federal judge’s decision from September that ruled a Montana Southern Baptist church violated state law when it backed a proposed constitutional marriage amendment without reporting its support to the state. In 2004, Canyon Ferry Road Baptist Church, East Helena, Mont., placed petitions for a proposed state constitutional marriage amendment in the church foyer, and its pastor, Berthold G. Stumberg III, encouraged support for it from the pulpit. The amendment passed that year by a margin of 66–34 percent. In March of this year, Gordon Higgins, Montana’s commissioner of political practices, ruled that the church violated state law because it did not fill out paperwork reporting itself as an “incidental political committee.”

The lawsuit by ADF on behalf of the church seeks to overturn Montana’s election law as well as Higgins’ ruling, arguing that both violate the church’s religious freedoms. Montana’s law is one of the strictest in the country regarding church involvement in political issues. Higgins’ predecessor began investigating the church after a homosexual activist group filed a complaint.