In April 2025, Montana became the first state to pass a Right to Compute Act — a law that makes owning and using computational resources, including AI, a fundamental right under the state constitution. Government restrictions on that right now have to clear "strict scrutiny," the highest legal bar in American law. For an ordinary Montana business running AI tools, that means no new paperwork — it means the state has made it structurally hard for future rules to take that option away.
What the Right to Compute Act actually says
Senate Bill 212, sponsored by Sen. Daniel Zolnikov, R-Billings, passed the Montana Senate 50-0 and the House 61-38 before Gov. Greg Gianforte signed it into law (Montana Free Press, 2025). The statute establishes "the fundamental right to privately own and use computational resources for lawful purposes," and any government attempt to restrict that right must be "narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest" — the strict-scrutiny standard courts otherwise reserve for restrictions on core constitutional rights (multistate.ai, 2025).
That's a different legal posture than almost every other state has taken toward AI. Most state AI laws start from restriction — what a business has to disclose, document, or get consent for. Montana's law starts from the opposite premise: using a computer, including an AI model, is presumptively a protected right, and the state has to justify getting in the way of it.
What it means if you're not running a data center
The law does carve out one real obligation, and it's narrow: when an AI system is put in control of critical infrastructure — the examples are power and water systems — the deployer has to maintain a reasonable risk-management policy (multistate.ai, 2025). A contractor's AI phone system, a dental office's scheduling assistant, a retailer's inventory tool — none of that is critical infrastructure, and none of it triggers the requirement. For the overwhelming majority of Montana businesses adopting AI, the law adds no new compliance step at all. It just makes the right to keep using the tool harder for a future legislature to take away.
Why this matters while most states are adding rules, not removing them
Nationally, the mood among small business owners is closer to dread than confidence. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce found 65% of small businesses worry about rising litigation and compliance costs from conflicting state AI laws, and if faced with rules similar to Colorado's or California's, a third said they'd cut back their AI use and another fifth said they'd be less likely to adopt it at all (U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2025). California's privacy and AI rules alone run small businesses there roughly $16,000 a year in compliance costs, by the Chamber's estimate — what it calls an "interstate innovation tax" on businesses trying to compete without a matching compliance budget.
Montana isn't in that fight. There's no state AI disclosure-and-documentation regime for a business to track, because the underlying legal question — can the state restrict your use of computing tools at all — was answered the other direction before most states had even drafted their bills.
Other states are now copying Montana's approach
By March 2026, three more states had introduced their own versions: Ohio's HB 392 had cleared four committee hearings with most testimony in favor, New Hampshire's HB 1124 had its first hearing alongside a separate push for a constitutional amendment, and South Carolina's Bill 4657 was modeled directly on Montana's statute (Mackinac Center, 2026). Montana wasn't a one-off experiment — it's becoming the template other legislatures reach for when they want to protect computing access instead of restricting it.
| State | Bill | 2026 status |
|---|---|---|
| Montana | SB 212 (enacted) | Signed into law April 2025 — the model other states are now following |
| Ohio | HB 392 | Four committee hearings held as of March 2026, most testimony in favor |
| New Hampshire | HB 1124 | First hearing held; a separate constitutional-amendment push is also underway |
| South Carolina | Bill 4657 | Introduced January 2026, referred to committee, modeled on Montana's law |
None of this means Montana businesses are exempt from every consumer-protection rule that touches AI — a separate, narrower question, like whether an AI phone system has to identify itself as AI to a caller, is its own legal issue with its own state-by-state answers. The Right to Compute Act doesn't govern disclosure. What it governs is whether the state can restrict your right to use the technology at all, and on that question, Montana closed the door on new restrictions before most states opened the conversation.