Trans man forced to leave Idaho to use public bathrooms joins lawsuit against state

Diego Fable has called Idaho home for more than a decade. He is leaving because he needs to use the bathroom.

The choice created by House Bill 752 is not a dramatic confrontation or a courtroom argument. It is a decision made before walking out the front door. Where will he go if he needs to use the restroom? What will happen when he gets there? For Fable, a transgender man, those questions have become unbearable.

"With this new law, I've decided I have no choice but to relocate to a different state to protect myself," he said at a press conference announcing a federal lawsuit challenging the measure. "This is heartbreaking because I consider Idaho my home, and I'd be leaving behind a close-knit community I've developed while living here."

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The legal challenge, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, targets a law that makes it a crime to use public restrooms that do not align with a person’s sex assigned at birth.

The measure applies to government buildings and many places of public accommodation, including private businesses, and carries penalties of up to one year in jail for a first offense and up to five years in prison for repeat violations.

But the law’s substance is only part of the story. Its speed has become part of the argument. Introduced, debated, and passed within weeks, the bill cleared the Idaho House on March 16 and the Senate on March 27 before reaching Republican Gov. Brad Little’s desk, where it was signed on March 31.

Lambda Legal attorney Kell Olson, who represents six transgender plaintiffs in the case, said the law creates a situation with no workable path. "Transgender people do not want to be subject to violence or harassment," Olson told The Advocate in an interview. "And so the choice is either to forego restroom use or to walk into a restroom where you know you are going to be perceived to be violating the law."

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He said the premise that people can simply use a different restroom does not reflect how gender is perceived and enforced in public spaces. "By complying with the law,” Olson said, “it looks like you’re violating the law.” For transgender people, being perceived in a bathroom could nearly guarantee a police interaction, Olson explained.

Fable described that contradiction in practical terms. As a transgender man, walking into a women’s restroom — the one the law requires him to use — would make him visibly out of place. “Since I look like a man, using the women’s restroom would only invite suspicion, questions, harassment, and potentially violence,” he said. “Or do I avoid going out altogether, missing time with my family, with my friends, and impacting my employment?”

Fable said he sees no safe option.

For Amelia Milette, a lifelong Idaho resident, the law’s damage is cumulative.

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“I can no longer assume I’ll have access to a safe restroom when I am simply doing my job," she said during the press conference. "It forces me to compromise my privacy and safety by using a facility that doesn’t align with how I present myself in my daily life. I now also have to evaluate every social activity I participate in against the risk I’ll experience if I simply need to use the restroom.”

The result is an accumulation of small withdrawals from work, from community, from public space itself.

“This new law will inevitably keep me from engaging with my community and being in public,” Milette said. "It does not protect anyone. It only puts people like me in danger."

Attorneys behind the lawsuit argue the law is unconstitutional on multiple grounds, including violations of equal protection, due process, and privacy rights. "None of us can predict when we're going to have an urgent need," he said, "and that's going to become necessary even if you try to avoid it."

Olson said the law effectively turns a basic bodily need into a legal risk.

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"Even if every place had gender-neutral options, which clearly they don’t," Olson said, “it makes it functionally impossible to get through your daily life and be able to use a restroom that is not going to both be legal under this law and not cause a major disruption, to say the least."

The plaintiffs are asking the court to block the law before it takes effect on July 1.

"This law is forcing me to leave my treasured friends and community behind,” Fable said.