Montana State Hospital. Credit Keith Schubert
A man convicted of a felony earlier this year in Deer Lodge County who was involuntarily committed to the Montana State Hospital must have his ballot counted by the county clerk and recorder, a district court judge in Anaconda ordered on Friday.
Third Judicial District Court Judge Ray Dayton issued a preliminary injunction that orders Deer Lodge County Clerk and Recorder Toni Hofland and her team of election workers to count Joshua Cypher’s ballot for the November 2024 election while the rest of the case plays out.
Cypher had registered to vote absentee in this year’s election, but Hofland rejected his registration application on the basis he was committed to the Department of Corrections on a felony despite being housed at the state hospital in Warm Springs.
Cypher and Disability Rights Montana then sued.
In direct response to Cypher’s lawsuit, Attorney General Austin Knudsen in October issued a new legal opinion that found that no felon – no matter whether they are involuntarily committed to the state hospital – enjoys the right to vote while serving their sentence.
Montana law says convicted felons cannot vote while “serving a sentence in a penal institution.” It also says that “a person adjudicated to be of an unsound mind” can’t vote until “restored to capacity as provided by law.”
But Dayton wrote that despite the new opinion, the Attorney General’s Office admitted at a hearing that the state hospital was not a penal institution and that a court had never found Cypher to be of “an unsound mind.”
“In this case, if the Court does not enjoin further interference with Mr. Cypher’s right to vote, he will suffer complete disenfranchisement by operation of the AG’s Opinion in this election and in other elections that occur during the pendency of this case,” Dayton wrote.
Dayton granted the preliminary injunction on Friday, saying that the government’s admissions and the fact that the election had not been certified as of last Friday would mean preventing Cypher from voting would disenfranchise him in violation of the constitution.
“Given the Government’s admissions, and the facts identified above, the Court finds that Mr. Cypher currently meets all requirements … to register and vote in Deer Lodge County Montana and has met these requirements at all times pertinent to this case to date,” Dayton wrote in the order.
Disability Rights Montana, also a plaintiff in the case but whose attorneys are representing Cypher, said while the order applies only to Cypher and his ability to vote, it hopes to apply similar arguments to other patients committed to the state hospital during the remainder of the case.
It said an injunction was a “critical step” to ensuring Montanans serving sentences at the state hospital can exercise their right to vote.
“This preliminary injunction is significant because, in the middle of this case, the Montana Attorney General issued a formal opinion disenfranchising all criminally committed patients at the state hospital using the very same arguments the Court has now rejected,” said Tal Goldin, the lead attorney in the case and director of advocacy for Disability Rights Montana.
The court had granted a temporary restraining order the same day Cypher and Disability Rights Montana filed the suit, Oct. 7, which was three days before the deadlines for regular voter registration in Montana and for absentee ballot registration.
“Given the short window before the close of regular registration and the mailing of absentee ballots, if the Court did not act by issuing the TRO, Mr. Cypher would have been disenfranchised,” Dayton wrote in Friday’s order.
Cypher pleaded guilty but mentally ill to a felony aggravated assault charge in April – stemming from an incident in which he sprayed bear mace in a man’s face – and the court committed him to the state hospital during sentencing.
He had filled out and sent in a voter registration application on Sept. 30, but on Oct. 2, Disability Rights Montana was sent an email saying that Cypher was not eligible to vote because he was committed to the Department of Corrections.
Following the temporary restraining order, Cypher sent in his ballot.
After Cypher and Disability Rights Montana filed an amended complaint in the case, Knudsen’s office took over representation of Hofland, the clerk who declined Cypher’s ballot. The Attorney General’s Office filed its motion to oppose the request for a preliminary injunction, and Knudsen authored his legal opinion on the voting rights of people involuntarily committed to the state hospital on Oct. 22.
Dayton said in Friday’s order that the briefing and legal opinion from the Attorney General’s office argued that since Cypher was guilty of a felony, he was both of “an unsound mind” and serving his sentence at a penal institution.
But Dayton called those arguments “insufficient” to overcome those from Cypher. Dayton wrote that Knudsen’s opinion “disenfranchised every individual at the Hospital currently committed for a felony under the ‘guilty but mentally ill’ statute” and not just Cypher.
Then, during the Oct. 28 hearing on the ask for a preliminary injunction, the Attorney General’s Office “admitted that ‘MSH is not a penal institution’ and that Mr. Cypher ‘has [not] been determined by a court to be of unsound mind,’” Dayton wrote in Friday’s order.
Dayton found those admissions to be consistent with Cypher’s and Disability Rights Montana’s arguments, writing in his order that he “agrees with both parties.”
“Nothing in the record indicates any court ever determined that Mr. Cypher is ‘of unsound mind’ such that he cannot vote … This Court certainly did not do that when it adjudicated Mr. Cypher guilty but mentally ill,” Dayton wrote. “Rather, the Court determined that Cypher ‘was fit to proceed, was able to have acted with purpose or knowledge at the time of the offense, but that the Defendant did not have the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct and to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.’”
He said that finding followed laws created by the Legislature “with no contemplation of application of such finding to determining or restricting the right to vote.”
Dayton found that it was “most appropriate” to issue the injunction based on Cypher’s properly following the registration and voting rules and the government’s admission that the state hospital was not a penal institution nor was Cypher adjudicated to be of an unsound mind. But he declined to go further in terms of how the decision could affect other similarly situated patients at the hospital.
“The Court leaves for another day the ultimate legal questions about why these established facts do or do not mean what they appear to mean,” Dayton added.
Disability Rights Montana, which is the federally mandated civil rights protection and advocacy group for the state and who works with patients at the state hospital, said it plans to fight for others at the hospital to be able to vote as well as the case continues.
“The fact we had to bring this case shows how the disability community’s most basic rights to be considered equal citizens are under attack,” the group’s executive director, David Carlson, said in a statement. “Disability Rights Montana is here to help our community fight back.”
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