HELENA — Organizers of a protest rally scheduled outside the Montana State Capitol next week said they were making changes to their plans because of new state policies on weekend events at the Capitol. However, they learned Friday evening that the state had updated its policy, allowing them to return to their original plans.
Claudia Clifford, of the group Indivisible Helena, is working on preparations for a “No Kings” rally Saturday, March 28 – part of a third series of nationwide protests against the Trump administration. She told MTN late Friday that the Montana Department of Administration had confirmed they would waive the new policies and allow a permit for the rally to be held in the Capitol’s flag plaza on a weekend.
DOA’s General Services Division posted an updated policy on “Public Safety and Facility Use for State Space and State Grounds in Helena” online on Friday.
The first two No Kings rallies at the Capitol were held on Saturdays in June and October 2025, and Clifford says several thousand people attended. When Indivisible organizers sought a permit for the March 28 rally, though, they were told the state would not be granting permits for weekend events.
“Specifically, what that means is we couldn't use the power, we couldn't be around the flags and take advantage of the seating area there, and we couldn't require any kind of use of Capitol security,” said Clifford.
Organizers were ready to adjust. Instead of setting up a stage in the plaza, they were looking at setting one up on a trailer on the street in front of the Capitol. Clifford said they would encourage attendees to bring their own chairs, and that they had brought in their own event security. However, she said they were concerned that their changes would make it harder for people with limited mobility to participate.
“They decided to do the right thing,” Clifford told MTN Friday evening.
This comes two days after Department of Administration director Misty Ann Giles answered questions about the policy changes during a legislative interim committee meeting – telling lawmakers the department might need to “go back to the drawing board.”
Giles said the decision not to permit weekend events was about resources. She said political rallies in Montana and across the country have gotten larger and more elaborate since the COVID pandemic, and that means events at the Capitol now require more from her staff.
“There's only five folks,” she said. “So we are looking at those resources and trying to balance that – because if they're working 12, 13 hours a day during the week, then they have to work all weekend as well for these events, guess what? They never see their families or their kids.”
Giles said Montana is an outlier compared to other states, in terms of how much use they allow of the Capitol grounds and how little they require from the groups holding events. She said she believed there would be another way to balance some additional restrictions with public access, but she wasn’t sure yet what form that might take.
“I do think we might have missed the mark, and we need to kind of go back and look at that,” she said.
Rep. Luke Muszkiewicz, D-Helena, who asked Giles for more information about the permit issue, was one of dozens of Democratic lawmakers who signed onto a letter asking Gov. Greg Gianforte’s administration to reconsider the policy change. He said he was pleased to hear DOA was open to other options.
“Those larger events held on the weekend are oftentimes the only time that a lot of people who work full time or go to school full time or live outside of Helena – it's the only time that they can realistically travel in and attend those events,” Muszkiewicz said.
