A district court judge has dismissed the 2016 lawsuit against the City of Great Falls over its ordinance prohibiting chickens in the city limits.

The lawsuit was filed in 2016 after Cheryl Reichert and Charles Bocock were cited and charged in Municipal Court for having chickens on their residential property in violation of city code.

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In 2021, both parties filed a joint response stating that they had been waiting on a summary judgment from the court, but in the meantime, the plaintiff’s hens had died, “therefore, the passage of time has taken care of this dispute.”

The judge issued his order on March 7 dismissing the case with prejudice.

The city’s chicken ban went into effect in July 2007 and in their lawsuit, Reichert and Bocock alleged that the city had changed those rules in secret.

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According to the original complaint, animal control had been called to the Reichert and Bocock residence on Prospect Drive five times since the ban went into effect.

The city had created a blue ribbon committee to revise the animal code and Reichert and Bocock alleged that the committee met in secret and didn’t keep minutes. They also argued that it wasn’t clear the rules would be changed to ban chickens in the city limits.

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But, the city clerk’s office was able to provide those minutes to the plaintiffs and 2005 minutes of the committee show that the committee “discussed allowing fowl to be kept only in suburban districts and limiting the number of birds that can be kept at a single residence.”

The proposed changes were also discussed publicly in 2004 and reported in local media that the definition of “livestock” would be changed to include “poultry and domestic fowl.” That report also included details that the plan was to ban chicken in the city’s residential districts, which the commission approved in January 2007 with a public vote.

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There have been several efforts in recent years to legalize chickens again in the city limits, all of which have been unsuccessful.

Chickens were on the 2017 ballot and failed by a vote of 6,646 against to 6,040 in favor.

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Attempts to amend city code in 2011 to allow chickens in most zoning districts failed and a 2021 petition asking the city to allow chickens was dropped by the organizers.