It has been a little over a month since the anti-trans state of Idaho got a reprieve from being sued. Now a Federal Judge has blocked the state from criminalizing transgender individuals once more.
A federal judge has blocked Idaho’s transgender bathroom ban before it can go into effect. The judge ruled the ban unconstitutional and questioned whether it could truly go into effect without discriminatory action.
In a decision issued Tuesday, June 16, U.S. District Judge Amanda K. Brailsford granted a preliminary injunction against House Bill 752, one of the nation’s strictest bathroom restrictions targeting transgender people. Brailsford additionally provisionally certified a statewide class of transgender Idahoans, extending the ruling’s protections beyond the handful of plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit back in April.
The decision marks a significant setback for Idaho state officials and anti-LGBTQ+ activists who championed the measure as a way to protect women and children in public restrooms.
Instead, the court concluded that the law’s enforcement mechanisms are so unclear as to likely violate the Constitution’s due process guarantee.
“Different officers could reasonably reach different conclusions regarding identical conduct, not because the facts differ, but because the statute furnishes no standards by which those facts are to be evaluated,” Brailsford writes.
The ACLU called the ruling “a win for trans rights” in a post on Bluesky.
“Our Constitution provides critical protections against laws that are unclear and that call on officers to make arbitrary judgments about how to enforce them, especially when the law threatens imprisonment,” Kell Olson, counsel with Lambda Legal, says in a statement. “The court recognized that threat in providing relief to plaintiffs today. This ruling will allow transgender people throughout Idaho to find and use a public restroom, without the fear of arrest looming over them, while we continue the longer fight to permanently defeat this discriminatory law in court.”
Lambda Legal CEO Kevin Jennings called the ruling a major victory against what he described as an unprecedented escalation in efforts to restrict transgender people’s access to public life.
“Idaho’s law represents a truly dangerous escalation of the war on trans people and is the most extreme we have ever seen on the subject of bathrooms,” Jennings told The Advocate in an interview. “So, it is an enormous relief to have a judge who saw the light and who agreed with us and issued today’s ruling.”
Jennings said that Idaho’s decision to attach criminal penalties to restroom use set the measure apart from other bathroom restrictions enacted around the country.
“Bathroom bans are problematic period, but when you start throwing criminal penalties, which involve multiple years of incarceration, into the mix as Idaho did, we’re talking about a truly dangerous escalation,” he said.
Signed into law by republican Governor Brad Little in March (with the intent of going into full effect come July 1), House Bill 752 made it a crime to knowingly enter a restroom or changing room in a government-owned building or place of public accommodation (including private businesses) that is designated for use by the “opposite biological sex.” A first violation is punishable by up to one year in jail. A second offense can be prosecuted as a felony, carrying a potential five-year prison sentence.
Critics argued that the law would criminalize ordinary activities by transgender people while creating impossible enforcement challenges for police and business owners. Those concerns became central to Brailsford’s ruling.
The main issue involved two “exceptions” that were written into the bill. One allows a person to use a restroom that would otherwise be prohibited by the law if it is the only facility “reasonably available.” The other permits someone to use a restroom if they are in “dire need of urinating or defecating” and no other restroom is reasonably available.
However, the bill is unclear as to what constitutes applicable use of these fuzzily defined exceptions.
Brailsford found neither phrase to be adequately defined.
The statute provides no standards for determining what qualifies as a “dire need” or whether another restroom is “reasonably available.” It does not explain whether availability depends on distance, occupancy, functionality, location, or any other factor. As a result, Brailsford concluded, enforcement would be left largely to the discretion of individual officers (and their biases—you were thinking it, too).
Two of Idaho’s police institutions—The Idaho Chiefs of Police Association and The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police, respectively—brought issue with potential law enforcement woes that would be brought by the enforcement of the bill.
The judge also raised concerns about how authorities would determine a person’s gender assigned at birth. “Defendants responded to this issue during oral argument that law enforcement could use DNA testing to prove biological sex,” Brailsford writes.
Brailsford noted that with the absence of consent (obtained without the use of coercion), a warrant, or other legal authority, law enforcement generally cannot simply collect a person’s DNA.
The ruling also rejected Idaho’s argument that the law is necessary to protect public safety. Brailsford noted that Idaho already criminalizes assault, battery, rape, indecent exposure, trespassing, harassment, and other misconduct cited by supporters of the measure.
The decision comes as states across the country continue to enact laws regulating where transgender people can use restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities. Idaho has already adopted separate restrictions affecting public schools, colleges, and certain state facilities.
“This ruling means trans folks in Idaho can continue participating in public life without the threat of being arrested for using the bathroom,” said Paul Carlos Southwick, ACLU of Idaho Legal Director. “Trans Idahoans have been understandably anxious about the disruption this unconstitutional law would cause in their daily lives. This ruling will relieve that anxiety for our trans friends and neighbors.”
Photo courtesy of Unsplash
