Idaho transgender residents file challenge to new bathroom law News
MarkBuckawicki, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
Idaho transgender residents file challenge to new bathroom law

Six transgender residents of Idaho have filed a challenge Thursday to their state’s new bathroom law. The suit, filed by attorneys from the ACLU and Lambda Legal, alleges that the law violates the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

The law, which takes effect on July 1, is the strictest in the country. Anyone who enters a restroom or changing room “designated for use by the opposite biological sex” may be sentenced to up a year in jail for the first offense or up to five years for a second offense. At least 18 other states already have similar laws, but only Idaho’s includes private businesses, which it defines as any business open to the public, including a library or highway rest stop.

Republican Sen. Ben Toews, one of the law’s sponsors, said that it was needed to protect women and children.  However, the state’s Fraternal Order of Police opposed the law. President Bryan Lovell wrote, “Officers responding to a complaint would be placed in the difficult position of determining an individual’s biological sex in order to enforce the statute…there is no…reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in…investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.”

The suit describes the danger of violence that, for example, someone who looks like a cis man (a man who identifies with his gender as assigned at birth) would encounter when forced to use a women’s restroom. The suit says that the new law “presents transgender Idahoans with an impossible choice: use a restroom that does not align with their gender identity and risk severe physical and psychological harms” or face criminal charges.

One of the plaintiffs described the difficulties that he expects in trying to obey the law. Diego Fable said:

I’ve been enjoying life as a man and using the men’s restrooms hasn’t been a big deal. But this law would force me to use the women’s facilities, and doing so would only invite suspicion, questions, and raised eyebrows. I would have to face tough choices every time I leave my home.

“There can be no doubt that this law was intended to erase the very existence of Idaho’s transgender community,” said Kell Olson, counsel, and F. Curt Kirschner, Jr., strategist for LGBTQ+ Seniors at Lambda Legal.

The suit seeks preliminary and permanent injunctive relief to maintain the status quo in Idaho.

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