Hutterites in Montana: Colonies, Farming, and Workers’ Comp

Hutterites in Montana are an Anabaptist Christian community of roughly 50 communal farming colonies concentrated in the central and northern parts of the state, where they practice pacifism, share all property, and produce a significant share of Montana’s eggs, hogs, dairy, and poultry. Their communal structure has made them major agricultural players and, at the same time, recurring participants in Montana disputes over taxes, workers’ compensation, schools, and competition with family farms.

Who the Hutterites Are and How They Reached Montana

Hutterites trace their roots to the sixteenth-century Reformation in Europe. After generations of migration driven by religious persecution, groups moved from Russia to the Dakota Territory in the 1870s, accepting an invitation from President Ulysses S. Grant that promised freedom to practice their faith as pacifists and German speakers.¹ About 400 of the 1,265 emigrants who arrived between 1874 and 1879 established communal colonies in what is now South Dakota.²

World War I nearly ended their American presence. Drafted Hutterite men refused not only combat but any military role, including wearing a uniform. Two brothers, Joseph and Michael Hofer, were sentenced to 20 years of hard labor for refusing service and died as prisoners at Fort Leavenworth in 1918.³ Wartime persecution pushed 17 of the 18 existing American colonies into Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.²

Movement back into Montana began in the late 1940s and 1950s, in part because Alberta’s own laws restricted colony land purchases.⁴⁵⁶²

How a Colony Is Organized

Colonies are built around the principle of “community of goods.” All property belongs to the colony rather than to any individual. Members do not earn wages, hold personal property, or accumulate individual wealth. At adult baptism, a person signs the colony’s articles of association, which function as both a constitution and a contract, spelling out membership rules, voting rights, discipline, and the property regime.⁷

Each colony is led by a minister for spiritual affairs and a steward or secretary for economic matters, with an executive committee of senior “witness brothers” involved in major decisions. Each branch, or Leut, is governed by a council of representatives from every colony, and a senior elder heads the wider church. Ministers are nominated across the Leut and chosen by lot. Women do not vote at formal colony meetings. A new “daughter colony” requires Leut council approval.⁷

Legally, colonies typically combine a corporation for land and economic holdings with an unincorporated association for the community itself. Many Montana colonies are recognized as tax-exempt under Section 501(d) of the Internal Revenue Code, which covers religious and apostolic organizations that pool their income.⁸ The Social Security Administration has also determined that colony property is not “available” to individual members when calculating eligibility for benefits such as Supplemental Security Income.

Their Role in Montana Agriculture

Colonies are major agricultural producers in the state. A 2019 study commissioned by the Lehrerleut colonies and conducted by the University of Montana’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research and Montana State University’s economics department found that the colonies contribute roughly $365 million in annual gross revenue to Montana’s economy and support nearly 2,200 permanent year-round jobs, about 40 percent of which are non-agricultural positions in construction, retail, and business services.⁹

The study found that Lehrerleut communities alone produce more than 90 percent of Montana-grown hogs, 95 percent of the state’s eggs, about a third of its dairy output, and 16 percent of its poultry. Their egg operations supply a Great Falls processing facility run by Washington-based Wilcox Farms that employs 50 non-Hutterite workers.¹⁰ Grain accounts for the largest share of the colonies’ agricultural cash receipts at 39 percent, followed by hogs at 29 percent and eggs at 13 percent. The colonies have added more than 5,300 people to the state’s population and generated an estimated $63.2 million in additional annual household income across Montana.¹¹

Longstanding Tensions With Non-Communal Farmers

Complaints from neighboring farmers have been remarkably consistent for decades. Critics allege that the communal structure gives colonies an unfair edge, especially in outbidding individual farmers for land, and that colonies avoid taxes.

Hutterite representatives have rejected the tax claims, and reporting by the Havre Herald found that colonies are consistently among the top property tax payers in Hill County and surrounding areas.¹² The 2019 university study confirmed that colonies pay property taxes and business equipment taxes and are subject to state and federal income taxes, though individual members do not receive salaries, which affects their personal income tax contributions.¹⁰ Individual members’ income tax information is legally confidential, which makes public verification of the competing claims impossible.

The grievances are not new. In 1963, the Montana Legislature considered a bill that would have limited further Hutterite expansion. It failed, but a legislative committee was authorized to investigate the colonies that summer, and critics separately pledged about $15,000 to fund a private inquiry.¹³ In summer 2019, former state representative Bob Sivertsen organized a public meeting in Havre urging a boycott of Hutterite goods sold at farmers’ markets and supermarkets, calling the colonies’ “socialist-commune system” an unfair advantage over family farms.¹⁴ About 30 people attended, and the meeting ended without a formal boycott decision. Sivertsen had difficulty finding a venue at all.¹⁵ The Montana Human Rights Network said his effort was “broadcasting misinformation and attempting to divide communities.”

The friction has occasionally turned violent. On March 8, 1998, an arsonist set fire to a lumber shed at the developing Camrose Colony near the Marias River in Ledger, causing more than $100,000 in damage. The blaze was part of a broader wave of vandalism at the site, including damage to vehicles and grain bins, and the poisoning of a cistern at another colony.¹⁶¹⁷ The FBI investigated it as a possible hate crime. A local undersheriff said investigators had identified a suspect but described the likely motive as economic “jealousy” rather than religious bigotry, and no arrests were reported. The Montana Human Rights Network and the Montana Association of Churches said local reaction focused more on grievances about Hutterite farming than on the violence itself.

The Workers’ Compensation Fight

The most significant legal battle involving Montana’s colonies asked whether the state could require them to carry workers’ compensation insurance for members. In 2009, the Legislature passed a law requiring religious organizations to provide such coverage for work performed outside the commune, prompted by complaints from labor unions and construction companies that colonies could underbid them on commercial projects because they did not pay wages or carry insurance.¹⁸

For the colonies, the mandate created a religious problem. Assigning monetary compensation to communal labor conflicted with their vow of poverty and their renunciation of private property. Big Sky Colony challenged the law, and a Montana district court initially struck it down, finding it was “drafted with such care to apply only to Hutterites” and imposed legal concepts of property rights “forbidden by the fundamental communal living and community of goods doctrine.”¹⁸

In late 2012, the Montana Supreme Court reversed by a closely divided vote. Justice Brian Morris, writing for the majority, called the insurance requirement a regulation of “commercial activities” rather than an intrusion into religious practice. The dissenters were sharp. Justice James Nelson said the ruling allowed the government to interfere with religious belief to benefit private businesses. Justice Jim Rice said the law was “specifically targeted” at Hutterites and created “illusory coverage” by forcing the colony to pay for insurance benefits its religious tenets prevented members from using.⁶

The U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari on October 7, 2013.¹⁹ According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the colony later reached a resolution with the Montana Legislature that allowed the community to continue its practices, though the specific terms are not detailed in available records.¹⁸

What Happens When a Member Leaves

Under colony “inside law,” a member who leaves or is expelled forfeits all claims to colony property and is expected to depart with essentially nothing. Because members formally sign articles of association at baptism renouncing personal property, the rule carries strong contractual force.⁷

American courts have generally declined to intervene. In Hutterville Hutterian Brethren, Inc. v. Sveen, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled in 2015 that federal courts could not resolve a dispute between competing factions of a South Dakota colony, because deciding who controlled the colony’s corporate assets required a court to rule on the validity of religious excommunications, which the First Amendment prohibits. The court also dismissed individual property claims, noting that colony members had entered a “community of goods” and formally renounced individual ownership.²⁰ The practical result is that a person who has spent a lifetime working for a colony can leave with no legal claim to any share of the communal property, and courts have shown little appetite for revisiting that arrangement.

Schools on the Colonies

For decades, Montana public school districts delivered on-site instruction to children living on Hutterite colonies through informal “interlocal agreements,” and in many cases districts operated schools on colonies located outside their own geographic boundaries.²¹

That system was disrupted by House Bill 214, passed by the 2023 Montana Legislature, which requires that school districts operate schools only within their own boundaries. The law effectively ended the cross-boundary handshake arrangements and required any remaining multi-district agreements to be formally codified, with county commissioner approval needed for agreements crossing county lines.²¹

Where local districts declined to continue on-site services or could not reach new formal agreements, some colonies have privatized their schools and now bear the full cost of educating their children. Others have pursued public charter school applications to preserve access to public funding while keeping some control over school organization. One proposal, the Liberty Academy Charter School, sought to establish a unified charter network offering in-person K-8 public instruction on up to six colonies, and the Montana Board of Public Education took up the application in December 2024.²²

Colony education runs on two separate tracks. Public school instruction covers state-mandated curriculum and is taught by state-licensed teachers. A separate “German school” covers religious and cultural lessons and is led by colony members, and public school teachers are not present during religious instruction.²² The arrangement has not been free of conflict. Financial disputes between county superintendents and colony-affiliated school boards have included allegations of fund misuse and breakdowns over budgets and teacher retirement contributions.²¹

Political Engagement

Though often perceived as isolated, Montana’s colonies have engaged directly with state politics. During the 2019 legislative session, the Lehrerleut Hutterite Colonies spent nearly $78,000 on lobbying, with priorities that included Medicaid expansion renewal and workers’ compensation requirements for colony members.⁹ Commissioning the 2019 university study was itself a form of public engagement, meant to counter recurring allegations about tax avoidance with independent data. Hutterite representatives have framed the recurring disputes as a form of religious persecution, saying it is “nothing new” in their community’s centuries-long history.²³

1
Johns Hopkins University Press. Remembering the Conscientious Objectors History Forgot
2
ERIC. Hutterite Education
3
History News Network. Why Don’t We Celebrate Conscientious Objectors
4
University of Alberta. Hutterites in Alberta
5
Montana Professor. Hutterite Colonies in Montana
6
Capital Press. Court: Hutterites Must Pay Workers’ Compensation
7
UBC Press. Hutterite Law and Governance
8
Social Security Administration. Hutterite Colonies – Montana
9
Montana Free Press. Hutterite-Commissioned Study Says Communities’ Collective Operations Add 2,200 Jobs to State Economy
10
Montana Economist. New Study Gauges Hutterite Economic Contributions
11
Montana Public Radio. Study Details Statewide Economic Contributions From Montana Hutterite Colonies
12
Montana Public Radio. Hi-Line Activist Renews Criticism of Hutterite Colonies
13
The New York Times. Hutterite Farm Groups Facing Inquiry by Montana Legislature
14
Great Falls Tribune. Ex-Legislator in Havre Urges Hutterite Boycott
15
Havre Daily News. Sivertsen: Communities Should Boycott Hutterites
16
Los Angeles Times. Hutterite Colony Arson in Montana
17
Chicago Tribune. Montana Religious Sects Target of Farmers’ Enmity
18
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Big Sky Colony v. Montana Department of Labor and Industry
19
SCOTUSblog. Big Sky Colony, Inc. v. Montana Department of Labor and Industry
20
Justia. Hutterville Hutterian Brethren, Inc. v. Sveen
21
Helena Independent Record. Hutterite Public Schools at Seemingly Intractable Impasse
22
Montana Free Press. Board of Public Education Fields Applications for 12 More Public Charter Schools
23
Northern Ag Network. Montana Farmers Express Concern With Hutterite Study