Idaho lawmakers passed a sweeping bill that would bar transgender people from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity, including inside privately owned businesses, according to the Associated Press. The measure, approved Friday, would define the violation as using a restroom, locker room or changing area that does not correspond with a person’s sex assigned at birth.
Republican Sen. Ben Toews, the bill’s sponsor, said the legislation was not meant to target transgender people as individuals. In remarks that AP reported, Toews said his intent was not to be “unkind,” framing the bill as addressing sexual predators and “very real issues,” and arguing there was no current law prohibiting what he described as a “biological man” entering a shower room with undressed women and children present.
If Republican Gov. Brad Little signs the bill, AP reported, Idaho would have what Toews described as the strictest bathroom ban in the nation. Under the bill’s penalty structure, AP said, a first offense would be charged as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail if a person “knowingly” enters a prohibited facility, and a second offense would be charged as a felony with potential prison time of up to five years.
The bill would apply beyond schools, AP said, by covering any “place of public accommodation,” defined as any business or facility that serves the public. AP reported the legislation includes nine exceptions, including for situations such as performing janitorial work, responding to emergencies, helping children, and when a person has “dire need” of a restroom.
AP reported that at least 19 states already have laws restricting transgender people’s access to bathrooms and changing rooms aligned with their gender identity, including rules in schools and, in some cases, other public settings. The Movement Advancement Project’s tracking, AP said, shows that Florida, Kansas and Utah have also made violating certain bathroom laws a criminal offense in some circumstances, but that Idaho’s approach would apply more broadly to private businesses.
Opponents argued that the bill would criminalize transgender people for existing and that enforcement would place police in a difficult position, AP reported. Law enforcement groups including the Idaho Fraternal Order of Police and the Idaho Chiefs of Police Association opposed the bill, saying it would task officers with visually determining someone’s biological sex or whether a person meets the bill’s standard of “dire need.”
AP also reported that Democratic Sen. James Ruchti compared the bill to provisions in Idaho’s constitution that once barred voting by certain groups including Native Americans, residents of Chinese descent and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Ruchti’s comparison, AP reported, the earlier provisions imposed civil penalties rather than criminal ones, while he said the new bathroom measure would set up a crime tied to a person’s identity.
Ruchti further argued, AP reported, that even Jim Crow-era laws that justified discrimination generally included provisions for “separate but equal” facilities, unlike the new bill’s criminal framework for bathroom use. The ACLU of Idaho condemned the measure and urged Gov. Little to veto it, AP reported, calling the proposed punishments “extreme and unnecessary” and describing them as an “unacceptable and discriminatory misuse” of the criminal legal system.
The legislation passed the House earlier this month, AP said, and then cleared the Senate with a vote of 28-7, with one Republican voting no. AP reported that Sen. Jim Guthrie said he could not support the measure, describing a scenario in which a transgender man with facial hair and other masculine features would have no win under either option—using the bathroom of his biological sex or using a restroom consistent with his appearance—because Guthrie said the “knowingly and willingly” standard would still apply.
As part of the pushback, AP reported that Transgender Law Center deputy policy director Heron Greenesmith said that even if arrests and civil claims are rare, the effect of similar bathroom laws has been to “embolden and empower vigilantes” to persecute people based on appearance. Movement Advancement Project director of policy research Logan Casey told AP that while some other states’ laws have ambiguity about whether criminal penalties apply only in government buildings or also elsewhere, Idaho’s bill would be the first to specifically target public accommodations broadly, AP reported.
AP also reported that in jurisdictions where using a forbidden bathroom can trigger criminal charges, prosecutors often need additional steps before filing—for example, AP said Florida charges may require being asked to leave a bathroom and refusing. AP added that the only widely reported arrest connected to violating transgender bathroom restrictions happened in Florida last year during a protest.