Best and worst states for LGBTQ+ people
The Out Leadership Index shows a widening gap between LGBTQ+-friendly states like Massachusetts and more hostile states.
A federal judge on June 16 blocked Idaho from fully implementing a new state law that would make it a crime for transgender people whose gender designation differs from their birth gender to use public restrooms, punishable by up to five years in prison.
The Idaho law, the most restrictive of a variety of laws enacted in about 20 U.S. states that limit bathroom access for transgender people based on their gender identity, was scheduled to go into effect on July 1.
But U.S. District Judge Amanda Brailsford in Boise, Idaho’s capital, granted a preliminary injunction to curtail enforcement of the measure while a class-action lawsuit challenging the law’s constitutionality proceeds.
Brailsford’s order allows transgender individuals to continue to use the single-stall restroom that matches their gender identity, or to use a multi-stall restroom if a single-stall restroom is not available on the same floor of a building. Otherwise, states are free to enforce the law, which applies not only to multi-purpose restrooms, but also to parts of the law that cover public changing and shower facilities that were not subject to court challenges.
The plaintiffs are seeking a narrow injunction that would temporarily ban only the parts of the statute they deem most onerous, but they are seeking a final court ruling that would invalidate the restroom restrictions in their entirety.
The lawsuit alleges that the law violates the plaintiffs’ rights to due process, equal protection, and privacy under the Fourteenth Amendment.
In a 30-page opinion, Brailsford sided with the plaintiffs on due process issues, finding that the plaintiffs’ argument that the measure’s enforcement provisions were unconstitutionally vague was likely to succeed.
He said that finding alone was enough to invalidate the state’s public safety claims and issue an injunction, without yet considering the plaintiffs’ privacy or equal protection claims.
Judges unmoved by national security claims
Supporters of the new law say it aims to make public restrooms safer and prevent men pretending to be transgender from sexually assaulting or filming women in women’s restrooms.
The justices agreed that the state has a legitimate interest in “promoting bodily privacy and protecting women and children in public restrooms from those who would seek to harm them,” but ruled that these concerns could be addressed under existing criminal law “without infringing on plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.”
The plaintiffs argued that instead of making public restrooms safer, the measure would expose transgender people to “possible violence, harassment, and psychological harm.”
In enacting the bill, the Republican-controlled Idaho Legislature “relyed on inaccurate beliefs and stereotypes about transgender people” and “conflated transgender people with sex offenders,” the lawsuit alleges.
Idaho is one of about 20 states that have some form of bathroom restriction for transgender people, according to a count by the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ rights think tank.
Besides Idaho, only three other states use the threat of imprisonment to enforce such laws: Utah, Kansas, and Florida. But Idaho’s measure is broader than the others and carries harsher criminal penalties.
The law makes it a crime to enter restrooms, locker rooms, or showers designated exclusively for the biological opposite sex when government buildings, restaurants, stores, and other private businesses are open to the public.
A first violation under the new restrictions would be a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison, while a second violation within five years would be a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Idaho has passed two previous laws restricting access to restrooms in public schools and college campuses for students whose birth sex falls within the gender designation of the facility in question, and seeks to enforce those laws by allowing students to sue if they encounter a transgender person in violation.
Both of these laws have faced legal challenges and will remain in effect until they pass through the courts.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
