Idaho lawmaker's latest transgender bill would ban mixed-gender bathrooms in public spaces
An Idaho House lawmaker who is a former women's college basketball coach has made it a top priority to pass laws in the Legislature aimed at transgender people and promoted her latest bill Friday — this one focused on single-sex facilities.
Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, introduced House Bill 264 to require universities, prisons, and state-run domestic violence shelters to designate multi-person bathrooms, changing rooms and sleeping quarters for the 'exclusive' use of a particular sex, and to prohibit entry by anyone of another sex.
Ehardt's bill allows people who 'encounter a person of the opposite sex' in a restroom or changing room to sue the institution and be awarded legal fees.
While Idaho previously passed a law prohibiting transgender students in public K-12 schools from using the bathrooms they prefer, Ehardt's proposal would expand those limits to adults and college students.
Ehardt told a House committee Friday that her bill would 'protect girls and women' in line with other laws the state has recently enacted. She invited legal counsel from the Alliance Defending Freedom to attend virtually to help explain her bill. The Idaho Attorney General's Office also contracts out for services from the Christian conservative legal advocacy group.
After joining the Legislature in 2017, Ehardt sponsored a 2020 law that made Idaho the first state to ban transgender athletes from participating in female sports.
In 2023, Idaho passed a law prohibiting transgender people in state public schools from using the bathroom of their choice. A lawsuit over the bill was argued before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last year and awaits a decision.
Last year, Ehardt joined Republican Gov. Brad Little in hosting college swimmer and conservative activist Riley Gaines at the Idaho Capitol to battle Title IX rules under former Democratic President Joe Biden that aimed to expand legal protections for transgender people.
Last month, Ehardt sponsored a resolution commending the Boise State University's women's volleyball team for refusing to play on three occasions against San Jose State, which reportedly had a transgender athlete on its team. The resolution was approved by the Idaho House and Senate.
There are an estimated 8,000 transgender people in Idaho, according to the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles. Separately, up to 1.7% of people are born with intersex traits, according to the United Nations.
Ehardt's bill does not include provisions to accommodate intersex people, and would prohibit people who identify as different genders from entering a multi-bed dormitory room of a peer who is not their same sex.
'There are disorders of sexual development, those cases are absolutely real,' Ehardt told the committee Friday. 'But the fact of the matter is, you can determine what sex a person is. … This entire legislation is based on sex. It does not care how you identify. You can identify how you want.'
At the hearing, a number of people testified that the bill ignores the state's intersex population and targeted transgender residents — and people who may even just appear to be of a different sex.
'As a woman who presents masculine, I have been denied access to restrooms until an officer can verify my sex on my ID,' a woman, who said she's avoided public restrooms for 25 years over fears of being harassed, told the committee.
'This bill seems to be written by people that missed out on some high school biology,' Boise resident Karen Cuellar told the House committee Friday. She said the bill would require institutions to set up 'gender inspection stations' to comply with the law.
'I am a … woman who is comfortable sharing restrooms and changing rooms with transgender women,' said Nissa Nagel, another resident. 'I do not feel safe with strangers, however, policing who looks womanly enough to be in this space.'
The proposal includes exemptions for cleaning staff, law enforcement, and people rendering medical aid to enter bathrooms designated for a different sex.
At Idaho's prisons, there are 60 to 70 people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, according to previous Idaho Statesman reporting.
Democratic lawmakers on the committee had concerns about how the bill, if passed, would work. The law would allow lawsuits against a public institution if it does not take steps to prevent people from using a bathroom that does not match their sex assigned at birth.
'What is the evidentiary standard that people who are prepared to sue need to be able to demonstrate that the person they encountered in the facility was of the opposite sex?' Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, asked Friday.
'If you're going to bring a claim, you would have to be able to say there was someone of the opposite sex in there,' responded Sara Beth Nolan, Alliance Defending Freedom's legal counsel.
House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, an attorney, said she did not see 'any shred of a problem being addressed here' with the bill and that it would force transgender men who present as men to use female restrooms, and vice versa. Litigation over the bill would be 'certain to follow,' she added at an earlier hearing.
Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, also a lawyer, has pointed out that while the bill allows people who file lawsuits over a bathroom incident to recover attorneys fees if they win, the bill does not provide a mechanism to require the filer to pay court costs if they lose.
The bill heard on Friday is the third version of the legislation that Ehardt has brought so far this session.
After she introduced the initial version in late January, Ehardt was surprised during an interview with reporters by provisions of her bill, which would have applied to any public restroom in the state and also would have, for example, banned male university sports coaches from entering their female players' locker rooms, and vice versa. The newest version removed the bill's application to any public building in the state, instead limiting it to prisons, domestic violence shelters, and university dorm rooms and campuses.
The committee's large Republican majority supported advancing the bill to the House floor for a vote.
'There's a compelling governmental interest in doing this type of legislation,' said Rep. John Shirts, R-Weiser, an attorney who prosecutes cases in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. 'Women should not have to be forced to share facilities with biological males in prisons or in domestic violence shelters.'
Reporter Alex Brizee contributed.
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