· Helena Independent Record · By Charles S. Johnson · From the Border Crossing Law Firm media archive.
The Helena Independent Record reports that MIJA, MEA-MFT, and U.S. citizen Alisha Blair sued to block LR-121 before its January 2013 effective date. The plaintiffs alleged violations of privacy, due process, equal protection, and federal supremacy, while Shahid disclosed that the Legislature's own lawyer had warned the sponsor about constitutional problems.
Blair made the risk concrete: born in Canada to a U.S.-citizen father and raised in Montana, she was a citizen by operation of law but lacked the conventional document the new system expected.