Federal court rejects longer block on Idaho's transgender bathroom restriction law

Yahoo

21-03-2025

Protestors on April 2, 2024, dropped 48,000 handmade hearts — meant to represent LGBTQ Idahoans, in protest of anti-LGBTQ legislation — down the rotunda of the Idaho State Capitol Building. (Kyle Pfannenstiel/Idaho Capital Sun)
A federal judge panel rejected a longer legal block on Idaho's law to prevent transgender students from using school facilities that match their gender identity.
In its opinion, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel rejected a preliminary injunction for Idaho's law, which was requested in the lawsuit Roe v. Critchfield and could have blocked the law during the litigation.
In 2023, Idaho passed the law through Senate Bill 1100.
Soon after the bill took effect in July 2023, a then-seventh-grade transgender student and Boise High School's Sexuality and Gender Alliance Club sued.
In October 2023, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked the law, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. But the Idaho Attorney General's Office, in a news release, said Thursday's decision by a panel of judges for the federal circuit court revokes that block, allowing Idaho to enforce the law.
In a written statement, Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Peter Renn disagreed, saying the court's temporary block on the law remains in effect.
'The appellate court's injunction against S.B. 1100 still remains in effect while the appeal is pending, and the appeal is still currently pending because the appellate court has not yet issued its mandate,' Renn told the Idaho Capital Sun. 'That mandate will not issue for at least 14 days and potentially longer if there are requests for rehearing.'
The Idaho Attorney General's Office did not respond to requests for comment from the Sun asking why the office believed the decision allows Idaho to enforce the law.
The temporary federal court block came shortly after a lower federal court judge, Judge David C. Nye for the U.S. District Court of Idaho, rejected a request for a preliminary injunction.
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In its opinion released Thursday, written by Judge Morgan Christen, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Nye's decision to reject a preliminary injunction. The opinion stated the lawsuit's plaintiffs were 'unlikely to succeed on the merits' of their objections to the law, including allegations that the law violates the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment, federal Title IX law and the right to informational privacy 'by excluding transgender students from facilities matching their gender identity.'
'Applying intermediate scrutiny, the panel held that the State identified an important governmental objective — protecting bodily privacy — and that the State chose permissible means to achieve that objective,' the federal court panel ruled.
Idaho's law requires public schools to maintain two separate multi-occupancy restrooms, showers, changing facilities and overnight accommodations for students based on their sex assigned at birth.
The law forbids people of one sex from entering facilities designated for another sex, with exceptions for cleaning, medical aid, athletic staff and some other circumstances.
'At this state in the litigation, the panel saw no argument that S.B. 1100's mandatory segregation of these facilities on the basis of 'biological sex' is not substantially related to the State's interest in: (1) not exposing students to the unclothed bodies of students of the opposite sex; and (2) protecting students from having to expose their own unclothed bodies to students of the opposite sex,' the federal opinion stated.
In May 2024, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments in the lawsuit, Idaho Reports reported.
In a written statement, Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador applauded 'the court's decision to allow our State Board of Education to continue its job of preserving each student's privacy, dignity, and safety and providing a quality education for Idaho's children.'
'Idaho's law reflects common sense and biological reality, protecting all students' privacy and safety in spaces like locker rooms and showers,' Labrador wrote. 'Every day, we see more examples of the harms of gender ideology, particularly to women and girls.'
Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ advocacy law firm representing the plaintiffs, pledged to continue to fight for transgender students' rights.
'This limited ruling is a disappointing but ultimately temporary setback for transgender students across Idaho, who for years have been using school facilities matching their gender identity without incident until Idaho legislators decided to target them for discrimination,' Renn, an attorney with Lambda Legal, said in a written statement. 'Importantly, the court was clear that it was not holding that it would be constitutional to ban transgender students from restrooms, in particular, consistent with their gender identity.'
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian law firm that has agreed to represent Idaho for free in litigation, represented Idaho officials in the case.
'Girls and boys each deserve a private space to shower, undress, use the restroom, and sleep, and they shouldn't have to worry about sharing these spaces with a member of the opposite sex,' the law firm's Senior Counsel Erin Hawley wrote in a statement published by the Idaho Office of the Attorney General.
Roe v. Critchfield opinion 3-20-25
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