A federal judge has blocked Montana from enforcing a 2025 law that restricts AI-generated political advertisements, handing critics of state deepfake rules another win in a growing string of courtroom defeats.
U.S. District Judge Susan Watters issued a preliminary injunction on Wednesday, finding that the law's challengers are likely to succeed on their First Amendment claims, according to Reason and multiple Montana news outlets, including Montana Free Press and the Daily Montanan. For more context on this story, see our ongoing breaking AI news.
The Law, and the Mailers That Challenged It
Montana's law made it illegal to sponsor or distribute an election communication within 60 days of voting if the sponsor "knew or should have known" the material is a deepfake, though satire and parody were exempted.
The challenge was brought by Accountability in State Government, a group run by former state lawmaker Dan Bartel. The organization had mailed political attack ads containing doctored images of state politicians — including pictures of officeholders holding pride flags and wearing pronoun badges they never actually posed for.
The mailers prompted complaints from the targeted officials. State Rep. Jennifer Carlson, a Republican from Manhattan, Montana, argued that a mailer showing her with an AI-generated pride flag was created "with the intent to injure the reputation of the candidate or otherwise deceive a voter," according to Reason.
From Dismissed Complaints to an Injunction
The episode took a turn in August, when Montana's Commissioner of Political Practices, Christopher Gallus, dismissed the complaints against the group. Gallus concluded the mailers were sufficiently "humorous or outlandish" to qualify as satire — precisely the exemption the statute contained.
The next morning, Judge Watters heard arguments on Bartel's request to block enforcement of the law altogether. This week she sided with the challengers. The problem, in her view, was the statute's asymmetry: it targeted synthetic media created "with the intent to injure the reputation" of a candidate or party. As Watters put it, the law "treats identically deceptive media differently based solely on whether its message is weaponized to damage or deployed to elevate a candidate" — the kind of viewpoint-based distinction the First Amendment ordinarily does not permit.
Adam Schulman, an attorney with the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute who is representing Bartel, told Reason that the flaw was fundamental. "You could have AI deepfakes that were fine as long as they were complimentary," Schulman said, offering the hypothetical of a deepfake showing a politician in a Pittsburgh Steelers uniform — flattering, and therefore permitted under the statute. He also argued the law forced regulators into inherently subjective judgments about political imagery, since it relied partly on how a "reasonable person" would understand the material. "People have different artistic sensibilities," Schulman said.
Part of a National Pattern
Montana is hardly alone in discovering the constitutional difficulty of regulating AI-generated political speech. Plenty of states have attempted such restrictions, and the early results have been strikingly consistent.
After conservative YouTuber Christopher Kohls posted an AI-produced parody of then-Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election, California passed Assembly Bill 2839, prohibiting distribution of communications containing "materially deceptive content" produced "with malice." In 2025, a federal court ruled the law unconstitutional and permanently enjoined California from enforcing it.
Hawaii's Act 191, passed in 2024, restricted "materially deceptive" election media. It was challenged by the satirical site the Babylon Bee, along with a Hawaii resident named Dawn O'Kane. In January 2026, U.S. District Judge Shanlyn Park granted summary judgment against the law, finding it "unconstitutionally vague," in part because it "employs ambiguous and subjective standards."
The scoreboard is now hard to ignore: deepfake election laws in California, Hawaii and Montana have all been halted by federal courts within roughly two years of passage.
Why It Matters for AI Policy
Ülke çapındaki yasa koyucular sentetik siyasi medyanın yasaklanması için çabalamaya devam ederken ve üretken araçlar uydurma ses ve videoyu her yıl daha ucuz ve daha inandırıcı hale getirirken, Montana iktidara geliyor. Mahkeme kavgaları, düzenlemenin yasal olarak yapabileceklerinin sınırlarını şekillendiriyor: Deepfake'in bir adaya yardım edip etmediğini belirleyen amaca dayalı standartlar, devletten kendi bakış açılarına göre siyasi mesajları cezalandırmasını talep ettiği için kötü sonuç verdi.
Yasaları destekleyenler, seçim bütünlüğünün, seçmenleri geniş çapta aldatabilecek yapay zeka sahtekarlıklarına karşı harekete geçilmesini gerektirdiğini savunuyor. Mahkemede kazanan karşı argüman usule ilişkin ve anayasaldır: Zarar verici sahtekarlık yapan aynı araçlar aynı zamanda hiciv, parodi ve kaba siyasi mizaha da yol açar ve bunları güvenilir bir şekilde birbirinden ayıramayan yasalar korumalı ifadeyi de silip süpürür.
Sırada Ne Olacak?
Montana'nın tedbir kararına itiraz etmek için bir ayı var, ancak Kaliforniya ve Hawaii'deki sonuçlar göz önüne alındığında eyalet iki kez düşünebilir. Yapay zeka tarafından üretilen siyasi medyanın Birinci Değişiklik çizgilerinin tam olarak nerede çizileceğine ilişkin daha geniş anayasal soru hâlâ çözümlenmemiş durumda. İlk davalar seyahatin yönünü ortaya koyuyor: Mahkemeler, sentetik siyasi ifadeyi kısıtlama girişimlerinin, parodiyi ve hoş karşılanmayan siyasi söylemi koruyan sınırlamalarla aynı olduğu konusunda defalarca uyardı. Şu anda devlet dairelerinde hazırlanan deepfake yasa tasarılarının bir sonraki turu için Montana, öznel, niyete dayalı standartların zorlu bir yolla karşı karşıya kalacağına dair en son kanıtları sunuyor.
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