HELENA — Montana’s highest court has issued its final ruling in the professional conduct case against Attorney General Austin Knudsen – dismissing the complaint without taking any further disciplinary action against him.
The Montana Supreme Court rejected a recommendation from a panel of the state Commission on Practice, which called for suspending Knudsen’s law license for 90 days over his handling of a long-running legal dispute between the Legislature and the judicial branch.
(WATCH: Montana Supreme Court issues ruling on AG Knudsen complaint)
Chief Justice Cory Swanson, who authored the majority opinion, said Knudsen had violated some of the ethical rules that govern attorneys’ conduct, but that the Commission on Practice had also violated his due process rights during the disciplinary proceedings.
“We could remand this case to the Commission for further proceedings,” Swanson wrote. “However, this would serve no purpose except to increase the already significant amount of time, effort, and expense incurred. Prudence dictates this litigation must end. Therefore, we hereby dismiss this case and deny the Commission’s bill of costs.”
Swanson said Knudsen had taken actions during the dispute “beyond what we have seen any competent attorney, let alone the Attorney General, do,” but that there was no justification for additional discipline at this time.
“While we have dismissed this case with no further proceedings to occur, the extensive litigation with numerous hearings playing out in public for years, coupled with our Opinion and Order finding violations, is far worse and a more informative sanction than the originally contemplated private admonition would have been,” he said. “Accordingly, this Opinion and Order suffices as the Court’s public admonition regarding the rule violations. Moreover, we plainly warn all Montana attorneys, including Knudsen and his subordinates, to obey lawful orders of all courts.”
Knudsen’s office released a statement from him on Wednesday, praising the court’s ruling on what he called a “highly irregular” complaint.
“I appreciate the Supreme Court bringing this frivolous complaint to a long-overdue conclusion,” Knudsen said. “We've said it from the very beginning, this was nothing more than a political stunt. I'm glad this distraction is behind us as we continue our work at the Department of Justice to keep Montana the best place to live and raise a family."
The Supreme Court released its opinion nine months after hearing oral arguments in the case. Because the case dealt with the court itself, most justices recused themselves. Swanson and Justice Katherine Bidegaray, who were not on the court at the time of the dispute, heard it alongside five district court judges.
The case dates back to 2021, when Knudsen represented Republican legislators who issued subpoenas for and received internal emails from Supreme Court justices, lower court judges and judicial branch staff. They were seeking information on whether judges had expressed opinions on proposed bills the Legislature was considering, arguing that the practice created concerns about due process and impartiality when the bills faced legal challenges in their courts.
The Montana Supreme Court blocked the subpoenas, ruling they exceeded the Legislature’s authority. Knudsen asked the court multiple times to reconsider, and eventually asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. In filings and letters, he and attorneys working for him repeatedly criticized the court’s actions, arguing it was inappropriate for them to rule on a case that dealt with their own policy and employees.
A complaint was filed against Knudsen with the Commission on Practice. It claimed that he and his attorneys had violated the rules of professional conduct for lawyers, by disobeying an obligation from a court and by making statements about judges’ integrity that were false or made with reckless disregard of whether they were true or false.
In October 2024, the members of an adjudicatory panel ruled that Knudsen had disregarded the Supreme Court’s order by not immediately returning the emails at issue, and that the language he “implemented, endorsed or ratified” in response to the Court violated his obligations as an attorney.
Read the full ruling from the Montana Supreme Court:
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
