For a Boise family of medical providers, Idaho criminal trans bathroom ban was the last straw
For a Boise family of medical providers, Idaho criminal trans bathroom ban was the last straw
The Devitts have seen the Idaho Legislature and the governor approve a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in recent years.
Michael and Dr. Angie Devitt, both medical professionals, watched their trans daughter, Eve, against a bill years ago that outlawed gender-affirming care for minors.
But this yearâs criminal transgender bathroom ban â described by advocates as the most extreme in the nation for extending to private businesses â was the coupleâs last straw.
So early this month, Michael Devitt notified patients that his practice, Focus Physical Therapy, would shut down at the end of August as his family prepared to move out of Idaho.
âObviously, this law is a disaster for families like ours,â he wrote in a letter. âWe can no longer take a road trip across our beloved state, or even enjoy a family night out at a restaurant, or a movie, without running the risk of Eve being charged and sent to a prison merely for using the facilities.â
Michael said he and his wife â who is the president of a large group of doctors, called the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians â draw the line at human dignity. Heâs heard next yearâs legislative session will be even worse.
âWe say âWeâre in an abusive relationship with the state of Idahoâ â all people with transgender relatives, or all transgender people. And you always think, âOh, theyâll stop hitting me.â But theyâre not gonna,â Michael said.
In addition to the bathroom ban, the Republican supermajority-controlled Idaho Legislature and Gov. Brad Little approved a bill to require teachers and doctors to out transgender children to their parents, and to re-ban local and state government agencies from flying the LGBTQ+ pride flag.
The city of Boise has already found a workaround to the latest ban, reports: making the flagpoles themselves rainbow colored.
Idahoâs anti-LGBTQ+ bills this year follow a trend
Three became law: The trans bathroom ban, the bill requiring forced outing of youth, and the expanded flag ban.
The bills follow years of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Idaho.
In 2020, Idaho became the first state to. In 2023, state lawmakers to provide gender-affirming health care to transgender youth. In 2024, lawmakers to apply to taxpayer funds and government property, which forbids Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care.
And for more than a decade, efforts to add anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people to state law have .
âOver the last several years, legislators have gone from refusing to protect us to actively targeting us,â Nikson Mathews, a trans man who serves as chair of the Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus, at a news conference in February. He was among after a sit-in protest over anti-trans bills at the governorâs office early this month.
Nampa Republican Rep. Bruce Skaug pushed for several of the bills â including this yearâs bill to require teachers and doctors to out trans kids to their parents. He says heâs trying to protect traditional families.
âI know that some people have sent me emails ⊠saying âWhy are you so genital focused?â Well, Iâm trying to protect families and children from those who are genuinely genital focused. And that would be the transgenders and those who would go after our children,â Skaug told the Sun.
Some see these bills as a distraction.
âI think what we see nationally and here in Idaho is lots of money being used to manufacture outrage and a crisis around trans people, rather than focus on the issues that really matter to Idahoans,â ACLU of Idahoâs LGBTQ+ Rights Strategist Jenna Damron told the Sun.
Boise Democratic Sen. Melissa Wintrow sees it similarly, arguing that the Republican party has chosen the LGBTQ+ community as a scapegoat while things arenât going well.
âWhile weâre worried about toilet seats and bathrooms, weâre going to pilfer the coffers over here and take the money that is the public wealth, and weâre going to give it all the way back. Weâre going to give it back to rich corporations and wealthy folks,â she said.
Why some call Idahoâs trans bathroom ban the nationâs most extreme
criminalizes transgender people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, including in private businesses. The law July 1.
A first offense carries a misdemeanor, punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years is a felony, punishable by up to five years in prison.
Only three states â Utah, Florida and Kansas â on trans people using bathrooms that align with their gender identity, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Mathews, a trans man with a beard, told a House committee earlier this year that the bathroom bill would force him to use the womenâs restroom.
âEvery single day when Iâm out in public, I have to decide: Do I feel like going to jail today, or do I feel like being attacked,â Mathews, below, told lawmakers.
Skaug said he supported the bill to protect women in womenâs spaces. He said it has nothing to do with transgender peopleâs rights, citing conversations with the billâs sponsor, Rep. Cornel Rasor, R-Sagle.
ACLU of Idaho Legal Director Paul Carlos Southwick told the Sun that the ban is the most extreme in the nation, mainly because it applies to places of public accommodations, which include many private businesses, like grocery stores, restaurants and movie theaters.
âMost places that people would go about in their ordinary life are going to be impacted by this bill,â he said.
A 2025 by the UCLA School of Lawâs Williams Institute found âno evidence of increased harms to people who are not transgender when transgender people are allowed to use restrooms and other gendered facilities according to their identity.â
But when trans people are refused access to facilities that align with their gender, the study found that trans people report verbal harassment and physical assault.
Little signed the bill into law on Trans Day of Visibility.
Bill to force teachers, doctors to out trans kids to parents takes effect July 1
forces teachers and doctors to out transgender minors to their parents, or face lawsuits. The law takes effect July 1.
Supporters argued the bill protects parental rights. But critics say it risks exposing some trans youth to abuse from parents.
Major medical groups say gender-affirming care is . The American Medical Association last month that gender-affirming care is âmedically necessary.â Some European nations are for gender affirming-care.
The bill was brought by Skaug. The lawmaker led efforts to criminalize gender-affirming care for all minors in Idaho and , which prevented Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care and prompted an eastern Idaho .
Skaug told the Sun he got started on the bill years earlier, when he pushed for the bill to outlaw gender-affirming care for minors. He said he encountered parents whose children were secretly transitioned.
Skaug dismissed concerns that his bill could risk trans kidsâ safety.
âI donât know what that situation could possibly be. If Billy wants to be Sally, thatâs a pretty serious mental health issue that any parent should know about, first and foremost,â he said. âSo I donât know of a situation where that has actually occurred, where thereâs an abusive parent that is going to harm their child because they want to change their sex.â
Boise quickly found another workaround to another ban on the LGBTQ+ pride flag
After the governor that arenât on the Legislatureâs pre-approved list, the city of Boise took down an LGBTQ+ pride flag that flew in front of its City Hall.
Just blocks away from the state Capitol, Boise had flown a pride flag for more than a decade. The city council declared it an official flag of the city to work around a flag ban law passed last year.
But this year made it clear that the pride flag canât be flown. It banned city flags made official after 2023. Eagle Republican has said his bill is .
But less than two weeks after the bill became law, Boise , KTVB reported: adorning the flag pole with a rainbow wrap, hanging a pride banner on the front of city hall, and decking the building with lights colored after the trans pride flag.
Michael Devitt bets thereâll be a bill next year to regulate the color of government flagpoles.
Whatâs next for the Devitts
The Devitts arenât sure how soon theyâll move.
Their daughter, Eve, is now 20 years old, attending college in New York City. But what about when she comes to Boise to visit? Her dad worries she could be subjected to a physical exam.
âHow do you navigate a community like that when we literally are penalizing people for their presence more than we would penalize somebody for assault, more than we would penalize somebody for, oh say, manslaughter,â Michael Devitt said. âI mean, there are all kinds of things you can do in Idaho that will get you prison time that are less than the second offense for using the bathroom that aligns with your gender identity.â
In a book about raising their trans daughter in Idaho, Michael and Dr. Angie Devitt chronicle Eveâs growth, and the coupleâs frustration with the Legislatureâs hyperfocus on âpersecuting transgender people.â
âI recently had someone tell me they were sick and tired of hearing about transgender people all of the time,â they wrote toward the end of their book, âFinding Eve,â which is written from Michaelâs perspective. âI told them, speaking for every parent of a trans kid in Idaho, that I am sick of it too, and so is Angie. Every time we turn around our legislature or governor are talking about transgender people and how the state of Idaho is working to make their lives more difficult.â
Dr. Angie Devitt said sheâll keep seeing patients, and may even continue to work in Idaho while she lives in another state.
But part of what hurts so much as a physician testifying in the Legislature, she said, is seeing local experts, like doctors who took time out of their day to testify, be passed over as committees rush through bills. That happened at the House hearing on the bill to force teachers and doctors to out trans kids, , but several people not from Idaho were allowed to speak.
As she waits to be called to testify, Dr. Angie Devitt said sheâs often juggling treating patients.
âI tell my patient, âIâm doing two things right now, and if I get called, because Iâm signed up, and you never know â if I get called, Iâm going to take two itâs only two minutes, unless they ask questions, and Iâm going to step out,ââ she said.
One bill that didnât pass is coming back. It would repeal local LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination protections.
Some anti-LGBTQ+ bills didnât pass this year, like an attempt to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to across the U.S.
But that doesnât mean they wonât return. The gay marriage repeal resolution is at least the second version introduced in the Legislature in recent years.
A bill to is coming back, one lawmaker confirmed.
passed the House, but never got a committee hearing in the Senate. Skaug, who sponsored the bill, says heâs planning to carry the bill again next year. The bill was written by the Idaho Family Policy Center, a conservative Christian lobbying group.
The bill would prevent local governments in Idaho from having or enforcing antidiscrimination policies that go beyond state law. The bill comes after more than a decade of failed efforts in the Legislature to add LGBTQ+ discrimination protections to state law.
More than a third of Idahoans â over 720,000 people â with local nondiscrimination ordinances, the ACLU of Idaho estimates. Since 2011, 12 Idaho cities and towns have passed , including Boise, Idaho Falls, Moscow, Lewiston, Meridian, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue, Driggs, Victor, Pocatello and Coeur dâAlene. In 2020, Ada County, home to Boise, its own.
A separate trans bathroom ban â which would have let people sue to enforce it, instead of allowing prison sentences â never got a hearing in the Senate after passing the House. The bill, , was also written by the Idaho Family Policy Center.
But Michael Devitt doesnât think the bathroom ban that passed is going to work as intended.
âThey say, âOh, we donât want men in womenâs bathrooms.â Well, guess what? Thatâs what youâre going to get, because youâre going to get people who look very much like the gender they identify with,â he said.
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