‘Trans People Are a Myth’: Idaho Republicans Pass Extreme Bathroom Ban Carrying 5-Year Prison Sentence

House Bill 752 criminalizes trans bathroom use in all private businesses with severe penalties. While passing it, Republicans argued trans people won't be harmed because they don't exist.

The Idaho State Capitol in Boise | Image: Wikimedia Commons

Today, the Idaho Senate voted 28-7 to pass anti-trans House Bill 752, with only one Republican, Senator Jim Guthrie, crossing the aisle and joining Democrats in opposing the bill. Having already passed the Idaho House last week, it now heads to Governor Brad Little’s desk, where it is expected to be signed into law. Once signed, it will take effect on July 1st.

As Transitics reported when the bill was introduced, HB 752 is extreme. It implements an unprecedented bathroom ban that applies to government buildings and, for the first time, any “public accommodations”—a definition that includes virtually all private businesses. And the penalties are no less extreme, making Idaho only the 4th state to criminalize trans people’s bathroom use. Under it, a first violation is considered a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.

If a trans person violates the ban for a second time, the offense will be elevated to a felony and carry a maximum penalty of 5 years in prison. Furthermore, if a person has previously been found to violate a bathroom law in another state, their first offense will also be considered a felony. Taken together, these provisions mean HB 752 is both the broadest and harshest bathroom law ever passed.

To put the bill’s severity into context, under Idaho law, indecent exposure is only considered a felony after the third offense, similarly carrying a 5-year sentence. Meanwhile, performing an abortion also carries a 5-year sentence, and this is something conservatives consider murder. It’s also worth noting that because Idaho has a “three strikes law,” a person’s third felony conviction will receive a prison sentence of “not less than five years and said term may extend to life.”

One Republican state senator, Josh Kohl, cast it as a bill that is needed to “protect Idaho’s cultural decency,” saying:

"We don’t want to become like California, or New York. We want to keep Idaho safe from so many of the cultural influences that are pressing down onto the different states.” Concluding his speech, Kohl then added he believed that “trans women aren’t women; they’re men and they need to be treated as such.”

However, a committee hearing this past Monday, one state senator, Brandon Shippy—a far-right Republican who made headlines during last year’s session for proposing a bill that would’ve charged anyone who seeks an abortion with murder, even in cases of rape or incest—made the bill’s intent much more clear:

“I think it reveals just kind of the truth of the matter: that there’s male and there’s female and there’s no other community.

“As we’ve said, it’s a myth. It isn’t true. And you know somebody will say that there’s a certain group of people that separated out and that there are trans people, [but] this bill doesn’t address a third group of people. It just addresses male and female.”

After spending the next minute going on a tirade over the ‘reality’ of ‘biological sex,’ Shippy concluded:

“But I think this is simple legislation. I think it’s needed; it’s prudent for Idaho. I think we have to keep reminding ourselves that there is no oppressed community that we’re dealing with here, because there is only male and female. So I reject the premise entirely.”

In other words, Shippy asserted that HB 752 doesn’t target trans people because they don’t exist. Even worse, he did so while staring down a room full of trans people that showed up to oppose the bill—including former substitute state senator Nikson Matthews.

But he gets one thing right: erasing trans people is exactly what this bill is meant to do. Under it, businesses that consider themselves allies will be forced to adopt policies making it clear that trans people aren’t welcome. At every turn, it’ll leave trans people with an impossible choice: prison or harassment.

If House Bill 752 survives an inevitable court challenge, Shippy will get his way, and Idaho’s anti-trans laws will no longer oppress anybody—because there will be no more trans Idahoans left for the state to oppress. And given Idaho’s history as a testing ground for anti-trans legislation, other states hoping to pass similarly harsh laws will be watching closely.

House Bill 752’s fate will serve as an inflection point: struck down, it may very well stop the growing assault on trans people’s bathroom use dead in its tracks; upheld, it opens the floodgates for an unprecedented onslaught of anti-trans hate across the country. Trans Americans can only hope it isn’t allowed to stand.