A bill further restricting the bathrooms available to transgender individuals passed an Idaho Senate committee Wednesday.
Idaho already requires that K-12 public school bathrooms and changing rooms be separated by sex assigned at birth.
The new measure, which has already cleared the House, applies the same restrictions to those spaces in correctional facilities, domestic violence shelters, and public colleges and universities.
Sara-Beth Nolan with the Alliance Defending Freedom was one of HB 264's architects and said the bill was left intentionally open-ended on the issue of enforcement.
“The reason that that is not more specific is because correctional facilities are going to need to enforce this practically differently than on a college campus,” Nolan told the committee.
For instance, Nolan laid out a hypothetical in which someone who is concerned that another person in line for the wrong restroom at a football game could find the university security team, who would then ask the person in question if they were using the appropriate restroom.
The vast majority of those testifying opposed the bill. Many witnesses said the vagueness of the bill’s enforcement mechanisms would lead to policing of cisgender women’s appearances.
“This bill leads to discrimination against women who appear more masculine or men who appear more feminine,” argued Gem County resident Rachel Rojas. “Take me, for example. I have short hair. I'm athletic. I rock climb. When I don't wear makeup or dress feminine, I have been misidentified as a man.”
Other witnesses questioned whether the bill could open the door to invasive questions about anatomy or even body searches for people trying to use the bathroom, something Nolan denied.
Rojas also pointed out that the bill also doesn’t account for the intersex community, which includes people born with genitalia, chromosomes or reproductive organs that don’t match the usual distinctions for males or females. Studies say about 1.7% of the population is born intersex.
“Around 32,000 people in Idaho are born with physical traits that do not fit typical male or female definition. This occurs at birth,” Rojas said. “Biology, not just gender, exists on a spectrum. These are real intersex individuals.”
Several transgender individuals testifying said the bill would put them in danger.
“I'm going to ask you to imagine a scenario,” Nikson Matthews, a trans man who testified at Wednesday’s hearing, said. “A crowded football game at BSU. Thousands of people, a few beers in. And me, this bearded man you see before you, going into the bathroom this bill says I have to — to the women's bathroom. What do you think happens next? How do you think women in the bathroom will respond? How do you think men at the bathroom will respond to me when they see me walk in that bathroom? This bill makes my life and the lives of people I love dearly less safe.”
Sponsor and Republican Rep. Barbara Ehardt (R-Idaho Falls) disagreed.
“That’s not what’s going to happen; it’s not what’s happened,” she said. “But the other concerns are probably more real as to what happens to our women if we don’t protect them in the prisons, domestic violence centers and our dorm rooms.”
Assistant Senate Minority Leader James Ruchti (D-Pocatello) said the bill’s broad language would have consequences outside the transgender community.
“We're becoming the morality police, whether this bill was intended to do this or not,” Ruchti said. “We're becoming the morality police for young people on college campuses because this bill very literally says that you cannot have a person of the opposite sex in your dorm room or using your bathroom.”
Under the bill, if offended parties feel an institution hasn’t taken “reasonable steps” to prevent a trans person from using a banned bathroom, they can file civil suits against the institution.
Ruchti was the only member of the Senate State Affairs Committee to vote against sending the bill to the Senate floor.
Ehardt said she’ll be amending the bill to clarify certain aspects of the measure for law enforcement as requested by the Sheriffs’ Association.
