Today, the Idaho state legislature adjourned, leaving two bills on governor Brad Little’s desk that could do massive damage to the cause of trans rights in the state and the nation at large. They are HB500 and HB509, and they both passed both houses by a supermajority. The Governor still can veto, however, and since the legislature is out of session there wouldn’t be an override vote. Considering the likelihood that these will soon become law, I will go into detail on both of them.

HB500

First, the content of the bill. It’s only four pages long, and I recommend you read it if you have time, but I’ll summarize here.

It’s called the “FAIRNESS IN WOMEN’S SPORTS ACT”. It targets transgender women in school sports. That’s the first important point: it targets women only. The core section of the bill reads:

(1) Interscholastic, intercollegiate, intramural, or club athletic teams or sports . . . shall be expressly designated as one (1) of the following based on biological sex: (a) Males, men, or boys; (b) Females, women, or girls; or (c) Coed or mixed. (2) Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls 11 shall not be open to students of the male sex.

Now, this is obviously a heinous attempt to stop trans women from participating in one of the mainstays of the American high school experience. These restrictions alone are cause for outrage, but the real danger of this bill comes a bit later, and it comes after you ask the question, “how would they enforce that?”.

The Idaho Legislature has decided that, to combat the plague of men going through the lengthy and difficult process of transition just to have a bit of an advantage in sports, they’re going to have to violate the right to privacy of every girl in the state’s school system.

If there is a dispute about the sex of an athlete in women’s sports, the school is required to receive proof that the student is female. This means that the student in question has to either get a blood test, for hormone levels or genetics, or a genital exam.

So, for all high school girls playing tennis and volleyball, you better hope you’re not too strong or fast and you better make sure you don’t get to muscled or tall, or the state is going to make you prove your sex and humiliate you.

This passed the house 52-17 and the senate 24-11

HB509

The “Idaho Vital Statistics Act” also sits on the governor’s desk. It says that vital statistics listed on birth certificates, like sex, cannot be changed.

The argument is full of logical errors. First of all, the reason given to justify this is that accurate record keeping is necessary for public health. This is true, but shouldn’t that information actually remain accurate? If birth certificates are to be used as important medical records (which is already kind of silly), then they should be able to reflect a person’s up to date sex, even if it has changed since birth. It’s also worth mentioning that trans people commonly assert that they were born trans, and a change in birth certificate sex could be argued to just be a correction of information that was never truly correct.

The bill makes sure to give a flawed definition of sex, as well:

For purposes of this chapter, “sex” means the immutable biological and physiological characteristics, specifically the chromosomes and internal and external reproductive anatomy, genetically determined at conception

and generally recognizable at birth, that define an individual as male or female.

The word immutable means unable to be changed. It is a fact that external and even some internal reproductive anatomy can in fact be changed. It’s called SRS. It sounds as if the Idaho state legislature is saying that, if you were born with a penis, even if you go through multiple surgeries to completely reconstruct your genitals, you still have one- even if you quite literally don’t- because of relics in your genetics that don’t actually do anything after birth.

It’s pointless to pick apart the logical flaws with the reasoning here, however. The point of this bill isn’t to maintain accurate records or to help anyone. The point is to stop trans people from asserting their gender; the point is that the Idaho Senate and House refuse to listen to the doctors, the psychologists, and the sociologists demanding that trans people be given their rights.

The bill passed the house 53-16 and the senate 27-6

The governor of Idaho, Brad Little, must veto these bills. They’re not only hateful and discriminatory, they’re anti-science. We know this because senator Lee Heider said so. He said that “boys are boys and girls are girls”, and that “No doctor, no judge, no Department of Health and Welfare is going to change that reality.”.

The Human Rights campaign, as well as many other transgender rights activist groups, has condemned the actions of the Idaho congress as illegal and unconstitutional. In fact, HB509 is in direct violation of a federal court ruling that banning birth certificate changes violates the equal protection clause.

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