Legal Groups Target Idaho’s New Transphobic Laws
State’s GOP pols broadly curtailed trans rights in the middle of a pandemic
BY MATT TRACY
The American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU)
and Lambda Legal have
launched legal campaigns
against laws recently enacted
in Idaho that effectively restrict
transgender girls and women and
intersex people from participating
in school sports and bar transgender
and non-binary individuals
from changing the gender marker
on their birth certifi cates.
The legal challenges follow a
controversial but successful effort
by both houses of Idaho’s GOP-led
State Legislature and Republican
Governor Brad Little to enact the
unprecedented bills in the middle
of a deadly health emergency that
has sent the nation’s economy into
a tailspin and strained the healthcare
system.
The bill banning trans girls
CIVIL RIGHTS
and women from playing sports
in schools and colleges — the fi rst
such bill to become law in the nation
— bans “students of the male
sex” from participating in sports
“designated for females women,
or girls” and allows individuals to
dispute a student-athlete’s gender.
Such a challenge would in turn
trigger a review process that subjects
the targeted youth to invasive
testing to confi rm their gender
based on anatomy, testosterone
levels, or the student’s genetic
makeup.
In response, the ACLU is leading
the federal lawsuit on behalf of
a transgender track star at Boise
State University as well as a cisgender
athlete who is afraid of being
subjected to the invasive sex
testing. Legal Voice, a progressive
Seattle-based feminist litigation
TWITTER/ BRAD LITTLE
LGBTQ legal groups are bringing Idaho Republican Governor Brad Little to court after he decided that
a good use of his time during the coronavirus pandemic was to approve a pair of transphobic bills that
came out out of the GOP State Legislature. ➤ IDAHO, continued on p.15
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in work zones.
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