GOP Idaho governor signs severe anti-trans bill to ban kids from “secretive transitions”

Read more at LGBTQ Nation.

Idaho Gov. Brad Little (R) signed a severe anti-trans bill into law last Friday that will require child care providers, health care providers, and educational institutions to out trans kids to their parents if they express any desire to act in a way perceived as discordant with their sex assigned at birth.

The Pediatric Secretive Transitions Parental Rights Act, which will take effect in July, bans folks who care for minors “from facilitating a pediatric sex transition or social transition without informing and obtaining informed consent from a minor child’s parents or guardians.”

The bill aims to close a “loophole” in the state’s anti-trans laws, as cosponsor state Sen. Ben Toews (R) reportedly put it during the state Senate’s debate on the legislation. That loophole, Toews said, is the fact that the state’s gender-affirming care ban does not cover social transitions, which he referred to as “the process by which vulnerable children are led into the pipeline.”

The legislation defines social transition as “the process by which an individual goes from identifying with and living as a gender that corresponds to the individual’s sex to identifying with and living as a gender different from the individual’s sex and may involve social, legal, or physical changes, including adopting a name, pronouns, appearance, or dress that does not correspond to the individual’s sex.”

The covered entities, then, must notify a student’s parents within 72 hours if they request to be referred to using new pronouns or a different name than their legal name; if they ask to use facilities like bathrooms and locker rooms that don’t correspond with their sex assigned at birth; or if they ask to join a sports team that does not align with their birth sex.

Not doing so, the bill says, means “aiding and abetting” a child’s transition before parental consent is obtained. Parents will also be allowed to sue entities for violating the bill, and the attorney general will be authorized to seek civil penalties of up to $100,000.

Democrats argued against the bill for its vague language and the possibility that it would put children with unaccepting families in unsafe situations.

“When we write these bills, we write these statutes, we’re writing them for all families,” argued state Sen. James Ruchti (D), according to the Idaho Statesman. “And so when nurses, when doctors, when educators, tell us we need a little room to be able to handle these situations carefully… and being required to report this within 72 hours takes that out of our hands, and it means that we have to possibly go to a family… and tell them something that that family may not be in a great place to hear.”

State Sen. Melissa Wintrow (D) called the bill “one more that’s just overcontrolling overreach and just goes far beyond what’s necessary.”

“Life isn’t that black and white,” she said. 

A lone Republican, state Sen. Jim Guthrie, spoke out against the bill, saying it will “force our teachers to be tattletales” and “put additional stress on teachers that are already stressed… already overworked, and more and more they have to deal with laws like this that are going to force them within 72 hours to make a judgment.”

After the legislature passed the bill, ACLU of Idaho spokesperson Rebecca De León called it an “example of unconstitutional, big government overreach into our private lives.”

“HB 822 threatens to undermine bedrock free speech protections for students, teachers, and health care professionals and is clearly unconstitutional,” she said. “Politicians who stand for small government and personal liberties should not regulate how people dress or express themselves.”

Jane Migliara Brigham, a writer for trans news publication The Needle, slammed the bill for turning doctors, teachers, and the like into “a kind of gender secret police.”

“The language is written such that there is no clear limit on what does not constitute social transition,” Brigham explained. “As a result, whether or not some behavior which is not listed here actually constitutes social transition will be in the eye of the beholder, or more accurately, in the eye of whoever is reporting the behavior to the child’s parents. This ambiguity leaves room for personal judgment, especially where that judgment is informed by anti-trans bigotry.”

Brigham questioned whether a boy wearing pink could count as evidence of a social transition and whether the legislation does not make clear where such an act would fall.

“Most casual observers cannot reliably tell the difference between a child who is trans, gay, gender non-conforming, or one who is simply socially awkward. As a result, what does and does not get reported to parents will, in all likelihood, be determined by bigotry and stereotypes, rather than any clear guidelines.”

At the end of March, Little also signed the nation’s most extreme bathroom ban. The law is the fourth in the U.S. to criminalize trans people’s use of bathrooms and other sex segregated spaces that don’t match the sex they were assigned at birth — similar laws have been enacted in Florida, Kansas, and Utah.

Guthrie was again the lone Republican against the bill. “If [a trans woman goes] in the bathroom of their biological sex, they’re going to upset a lot of people and freak people out,” he told the Associated Press. “If they go in the bathroom that is consistent with their looks — they are knowingly and willingly going into the bathroom — that is breaking the law.”

“They’re human beings,” he said, “just like us, and what are they supposed to do?”