Main Content
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC is a Montana-based entity the mission of which is to promote recognition and respect for the constitutionally protected private property rights held by western United States property owners, and to counter the laws, regulations and policies increasingly enacted by reckless and indifferent federal, state and local governments and officials which threaten those rights.
Learn More.Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC is a Montana-based entity the mission of which is to promote recognition and respect for the constitutionally protected private property rights held by western United States property owners, and to counter the laws, regulations and policies increasingly enacted by reckless and indifferent federal, state and local governments and officials which threaten those rights.
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC’s members are irrigators, landowners and business owners located on or near the Flathead Irrigation Project situated within the Flathead Indian Reservation, and from other areas in northwestern Montana, but their concerns are widely shared by many citizens throughout the western and rural United States.
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC is alarmed that Montana’s U.S. Senator Daines may soon be able to secure Congressional passage of his ill-conceived and falsely named bill – “The Montana Water Rights Protection Act” (S. 3019). Contrary to its short title, S.3019, if passed by Congress, will allow the federal government to give away substantial portions of the state-held water rights of northwestern Montanan irrigators, municipalities, and companies, whether they are located on the Flathead Reservation or just upstream from it.
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC emphasizes that northwestern Montana irrigators already have suffered calculable injury-in-fact (i.e., loss of legally protected water rights, physical use of water flow in terms of acre-feet, and also economic loss of harvestable crops or livestock in terms of dollars $). These losses have resulted from the State of Montana’s passage and enactment into law, in April 2015, and the State of Montana’s subsequent enforcement since then, of S.B. 262 – the CSKT Water Compact.
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC also emphasizes that any irrigator or other water right holder that has suffered any of these types of harm would be eligible to sue, as a member of a protected class of individuals, the federal government in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (in Washington, D.C.) for the purpose of preventing Congress from ratifying the CSKT Water Compact by passing S.3019.
Western States Constitutional Rights, LLC is now in the process of preparing to file a lawsuit to stop Congressional passage of the Daines bill (S.3019), and would, therefore, be interested in speaking with any irrigator or other water right holder who has suffered similar harm and is willing either to participate in or to support this coming lawsuit.