Idaho governor signs law making transgender bathroom use a felony

[Jessica_Rose ✅]

Idaho governor signs law making transgender bathroom use a felony

https://www.advocate.com/politics/states/idaho-trans-bathroom-bill-signed 🔗

Christopher Wiggins (1 April 2026)

Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, signed a bill Tuesday criminalizing transgender people for using bathrooms aligned with their gender identity, enacting one of the nation's most sweeping restrictions on public accommodations and marking a new phase in the state's effort to regulate where transgender people can exist in public life.

Little signed House Bill 752 at about 4:50 p.m., according to a daily tracking log released by the governor's office. Idaho advocate Nikson Mathews said the governor acted as activists gathered outside the statehouse for a Transgender Day of Visibility rally.

"He signed it while we held a TDOV rally out front," Mathews told The Advocate.

The law makes it a crime to "knowingly and willfully" enter a restroom or changing facility that does not align with one's sex assigned at birth in a government building or place of public accommodation. A first offense is punishable by up to one year in jail. A second conviction within five years can be charged as a felony, carrying a potential sentence of up to five years in prison.

Transgender residents say that the law doesn't give them a choice. In an op-ed for The Advocate, Mathews described what that means in practice as a daily calculation between two risks. "Do I feel like going to jail, or do I feel like being attacked?" they wrote.

Advocacy groups condemned the measure as punitive and dangerous.

[Lori Dee ✅]

I hope the law is clearly posted at every public restroom entrance so tourists from all over the world will know before they pee.