T​he Trans Idahoans Fighting an Extreme Bathroom Ban

A new legal challenge aims to prevent ​a​ punitive anti-trans law in the state from going into effect—and stave off a future where transgender people are at worst criminalized and at best objects of routine suspicion.

On July 1, perhaps the most punitive bathroom ban in the country is set to go into effect in Idaho. The ban threatens people with criminal penalties for being in a public restroom that does not match what the law refers to as their “biological sex” (a term it does not define). A group of transgender Idahoans have now challenged the ban in federal court, in hopes that it will be blocked before it can be enforced. Their lawsuit, filed April 29 by Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the ACLU of Idaho, argues that the state’s bathroom ban violates the constitutional rights of the plaintiffs, as well as any transgender person in Idaho.

The suit argues that the ban, HB 752, is both unconstitutionally vague and discriminatory, under the Fourteenth Amendment, and “presents transgender Idahoans with an impossible choice: they can either use a restroom that does not align with their gender identity and risk severe physical and psychological harms, or continue to use restrooms in public in accordance with their gender identity and risk a criminal record and imprisonment.” Through the stories they tell in the suit, the plaintiffs demonstrate that the ban presents an even broader and more insidious risk. In cases where the ban does not result in arrests and imprisonment, it could still turn transgender people into objects of routine suspicion, normalizing surveillance and questioning by police and the public alike, and granting such stigma and harassment the imprimatur of the law.

There is little doubt that the ban, one of many anti-trans bills taken up........

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