Idaho governor signs law making transgender bathroom use a felony

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, signed a bill Tuesday criminalizing transgender people for using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, enacting one of the nation’s most sweeping restrictions on public accommodations and marking a new phase in the state’s effort to regulate where transgender people can exist in public life.

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Little signed House Bill 752 at about 4:50 p.m., according to a daily tracking log released by the governor’s office. Idaho advocate Nikson Mathews said the governor acted as activists gathered outside the statehouse for a Transgender Day of Visibility rally.

“He signed it while we held a TDOV rally out front,” Mathews told The Advocate.

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The law makes it a crime to “knowingly and willfully” enter a restroom or changing facility that does not align with one’s sex assigned at birth in a government building or place of public accommodation. A first offense is punishable by up to one year in jail. A second conviction within five years can be charged as a felony, carrying a potential sentence of up to five years in prison.

Transgender residents say that the law doesn't give them a choice. In an op-ed for The Advocate, Mathews described what that means in practice as a daily calculation between two risks. “Do I feel like going to jail, or do I feel like being attacked?” they wrote.

Advocacy groups condemned the measure as punitive and dangerous.

“Sending someone to prison just for using the bathroom is nothing but pure, unfiltered cruelty,” said Delphine Luneau, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign. “Anti-equality Idaho officials have displayed exactly that kind of animosity by passing a law that would put transgender people behind bars for using the restroom and subject people to harassment and discrimination in the most private of spaces. This is a blatant and unconscionable attack on their own constituents that risks ruining the lives of innocent people while doing nothing to address the actual concerns of Idaho families.”

The legislation cleared the Idaho Senate on Thursday after passing the House, moving from introduction to enactment at an unusual pace for a bill carrying criminal penalties.

Law enforcement groups had warned the measure would be difficult to enforce. Organizations, including the Idaho Fraternal Order of Police and the Idaho Chiefs of Police Association, said it could place officers in the position of determining a person’s “biological sex” or weighing whether someone qualifies for an exception, decisions critics say are inherently subjective.

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The Idaho Sheriff’s Association urged lawmakers to require that individuals first be asked to leave a facility before police are called. Lawmakers declined to adopt that change.

The law includes a series of exceptions for emergency response, medical assistance, or when no reasonable alternative facility is available, but critics argue that those carve-outs do little to resolve the fact that the law criminalizes presence rather than conduct.

It arrives as part of a broader legislative push in Idaho targeting transgender people, including restrictions on bathroom access in schools, efforts to limit Pride flags on government property, and proposals critics say could force the outing of transgender students.

The law is set to take effect on July 1.