Idaho’s bathroom ban for transgender students has been temporarily blocked by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The law, SB1100, banned trans kids from using school facilities that align with their gender identity and offered children a $5,000 bounty for reporting trans students who use the restroom that matches their gender identity.
Challengers of the law say that it violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, a federal law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other education program that receives funding from the federal government.
The transphobic legislation defines sex as “immutable biological characteristics at birth,” wholly ignoring the existence of intersex children who have sex traits that aren’t entirely male or female. The legislation also states that the mere presence of trans students might inflict “psychological injury” on cisgender peers and increases “the likelihood of sexual assault, molestation, [and] rape,” trans independent journalist Erin Reed pointed out.