Montana Right to Compute Act

Montana SB 212 became Chapter 150 of the 2025 Session Laws and created Montana Code Annotated Title 2, Chapter 10, Part 2. The Act’s findings connect the ability to acquire, possess and protect property and freedom of expression under the Montana Constitution with a right to own and use technological tools, including computational resources. The Act’s title also signals a narrower operational obligation involving critical infrastructure facilities controlled by AI. Section 2-10-204 provides that a governmental entity may not restrict or prohibit a person from acquiring, possessing or using computational resources for a lawful purpose unless the action is demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to further a compelling government interest. This is a statutory standard for government action; it is not a universal immunity from generally applicable laws, and it does not create an unrestricted right to use computing for unlawful conduct. Section 2-10-205 separately requires a deployer that controls, in whole or in part, a critical infrastructure facility through a critical artificial intelligence system to develop a reasonable risk-management policy after deploying the system. The policy must consider the latest NIST AI Risk Management Framework, ISO/IEC 42001 or another nationally or internationally recognized AI risk-management framework. Definitions and exclusions are important: the Act contains a carveout for certain natural-language systems that provide information, referrals, recommendations, answers or content when subject to an acceptable-use policy prohibiting unlawful content. The Act was effective immediately, unlike a future-effective proposal. It should be read as a limited state statute, not a general national AI governance code.