On Friday, the Idaho Senate passed the most extreme anti-transgender bathroom ban in the United States: a law that applies to both public buildings and private businesses and carries severe criminal penalties. A first offense would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail; a second offense within five years would be a felony carrying up to five years in state prison. But the penalties do not stop there. Under Idaho’s persistent violator statute, a transgender person convicted of a fourth bathroom offense—their third felony—could face a mandatory minimum of five years and up to life in prison, immediately making Idaho the harshest state in the nation for criminalizing transgender people. Those who find themselves behind bars may then be subjected to additional brutality at the hands of a prison system that has been systematically denying transgender people their medication and placing trans women in male facilities. The bill passed 28-7, with one Republican voting against it, and it now heads to the Governor’s desk.
The bill, HB 752, states that “any person who knowingly and willfully enters a restroom or changing room in a government-owned building or a place of public accommodation designated for use by the opposite biological sex of such person shall be guilty of a misdemeanor” punishable by up to one year in prison. A second offense within five years would be a felony carrying up to five years in state prison, and under Idaho’s persistent violator statute, a fourth offense—the third felony—would carry a mandatory minimum of five years and a maximum of life. Notably, these provisions apply to private businesses, and the bill explicitly allows prior convictions under “a similar statute in another state, or any similar local ordinance” to count toward the escalation threshold—meaning a transgender person previously sanctioned under another state’s bathroom ban could face felony charges on their first offense in Idaho.
The bill drew sharp criticism from a diverse range of opponents, unifying voices that typically do not share the same stance. ACLU Idaho focused on the extreme privacy violations and excessive penalties the bill would create, as well as the danger to transgender and cisgender people alike from weaponizing law enforcement against anyone who defies gender expectations. The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the bill, with President Bryan Lovell warning that “in many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.” The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association joined the opposition as well. Despite pleas from police, Bill sponsor Rep. Cornel Rasor refused to add a duty-to-depart amendment—a provision that exists in Florida’s criminal bathroom ban and allows a person to avoid charges by leaving when asked—meaning a transgender person in Idaho could be arrested on the spot simply for being present.
If Governor Brad Little signs the bill into law, Idaho would become the fourth state with a major bathroom ban targeting transgender people through arrest or significant criminal or civil penalties. In Florida, where the offense is a misdemeanor carrying up to 60 days in jail, Marcy Rheintgen was arrested in March 2025 for washing her hands in a women’s restroom at the state capitol. In Texas, where the bathroom ban took effect in December, four transgender women were detained at the state capitol and issued criminal trespass warnings banning them from the building for a year. And in Kansas, the state created a bounty hunter system allowing private citizens to sue transgender people encountered in a bathroom for $1,000. Idaho’s bill goes further than all of them—the criminal offense is triggered by merely being present in the restroom, it applies to private businesses, and the penalties dwarf those in states that have already earned “do not travel” warnings on the Erin in the Morning trans legal risk assessment map.
It’s wild that the cops are saying it’s too invasive even for them
Literally, how the fuck are they actually going to enforce this? Especially in a state like Idaho, tons of people are going to be carrying and if anyone asks to see their genitals bullets are going to fly.
Trans people who don’t pass, Black women, and other people who aren’t sufficiently gender-conforming for their liking will be made to prove their assigned gender in court.
its especially strange because the bill requires purpose, you could just say you went to the wrong room on accident as a defense. obviously dont say anything and plead the 5th if anything comes of it then your lawyer can trot that out
Maybe I’m being too much of a doomer but I don’t think it’d be difficult to convince a jury that a trans woman went to the women’s bathroom on purpose.
This is an attack on everyone that doesn’t comply with stereotypes.
All anti-trans bills are untenable and fall apart under the slightest scrutiny.
I imagine they are taking bathroom goers to the station before asking them to pull down their pants. At what point do you start blasting?
At what point do you start blasting?
Preferably when you’re sitting on the toilet
jon lajoie suddenly going to be way more popular at karaoke night
A slick 17 year old refrence lmao
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
The pig union doesn’t want to pay out on lawsuits.
It’s truly depressing that the fascists have found their successful ‘visible minority’ to tear down the meager civil rights progress achieved in liberal democracies. I knew they were trying it with the gays in my early adulthood, realized it had been tried with Muslims in my childhood, but now they’ve managed to get most people to accept some amount of transphobia and nod along with, for instance, the IOC. My misanthropy has left remission.
Death to Amerikkka
nods America delenda est
Unlimited unisex bathrooms on the first world
apparently not in idaho
Leave it to the US to make it a fucking competition between states for these bathroom laws.
Maybe it’s possible to get some resources pinned somewhere to help anyone who needs to get out of the state (assuming that isn’t already posted somewhere)?
Does Idaho even deserve bathrooms?
is it possible to gender a shack with a hole in the floor?
nuke Idaho
Idaho is run by the epitome of rural MAGA and literal Nazi LARPers.
Pretty sure there’s a chunk of the NeoNazi set who think they should all move to Idaho and turn it into a fascist ethnostate. So, sadly, this isn’t surprising
Yes they congregate at and around compounds in northern Idaho
Right, this flavor of hate has been collecting in Idaho (and organizing, legitimately) for years - long pre-dates Trump. Been bad and growing, should not be glossed over.
started in the 70s or 80s I think. Look up the Northwest Territorial Imperative
This is why I am very sus of “leftists” who get all giddy at the thought of Cascadia as a separatist movement.
Cascadia flag:
I think it’s just funny to consider balkanzing the fascist US empire. Idk if any leftist takes it seriously though, I’d hope not.
I daydream about it (The US fracturing like in most cyberpunk settings) because it’d help the rest of the world, but that’s about it.
Unfortunately some do.
dont forget the mormon fundamentalists.
And apparently U-hauls
Idaho? You da ho!
This is truly awful but I kind of also feel Võ Thị Thắng “your government won’t last that long” about it
I feel similarly in that theres no way any law like this will last and be evenly enforced, especially after this administration, but at the same time I am worried about how much damage these freaks will manage to do before they lose access to power.
Yeah to be honest I’m more terrified about mass graves soon than a trans person possibly getting a life sentence in 6 years time.
This. Every day I’m feeling more and more confident in this not just happening in my lifetime, but with a decade, I would even argue in as soon as 5 years.
Currently listening to Гадам Нет Пощады and remembering none of these people will survive the revolution
Is there a law that prevents sane business owners from simply not “designating” their restrooms based on “biological sex”?
Gender neutral bathrooms? ILLEGAL.
So all businesses must have two bathrooms?
Nothing in the law prevents businesses from having only a women’s restroom and letting all men pee in the yard.
srs tho, these laws are never designed to be taken at face value, it’s always entirely about the transphobia and any fallout is shrugged off. Everybody behind this stuff knows this. None of them care about the inevitable consequences of running on fairytale bullshit like objective, binary and immutable biological sex. It’s the same as telling a terf that her definition of woman excludes intersex cis women. People think that’s a gotcha, but leading terfs like Janice Raymond have outright stated that it doesn’t bother them. Just as it doesn’t bother any British transphobe that passing trans people are possibly forbidden from using any public restroom now.
The cruelty is the point. If there is unintended additional cruelty, it is gleefully taken as a bonus.
In my state, it depends on the size of the business. I built out a retail shop, but I deliberately kept it small enough that I wouldn’t need two bathrooms.
Fuck.
What happens to someone who is cis but uses the “wrong” bathroom, whether out of expedience or just to troll the legislators? I’m a dude but at least where I’m from, if I notice a lady using the gents’ room, I might mentally flag it, but I’m not gonna visibly react.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread
i don’t go out anymore but it used to be sort of normal for women to use the mens’ room at some stadium or theater events because the line would be 8x as long for the “correct” bathroom and urinal throughput is efficient
That sort of my point, sure it’s possible for a cis person to use the “wrong” bathroom like a rich person could steal bread. Just we know it’s not who the law is actually for.
As the other person said, a cis woman who uses the men’s out of expedience is much more likely to be let off the hook than a trans woman who uses the women’s because she’s a woman. They might want to enforce on the former out of misogyny anyway but an individual cis woman has a better chance of a sympathetic judge or jury.
what’s crazy is i, a cis man(although i dont care how im gendered honestly, neutral is fine) one time went into a womens restroom, went to the bathroom, and when i left i was like oh fuck.
that happened mostly do to social anxiety where i don’t like looking at other people and totally ignore my surroundings, and i totally missed any signs. i remember sitting in that stall, and next to me a (assumed) woman was peeing, and i know what that sounds like. i thought “hmm that’s weird” and finished and left. the weirdest part was that entire time i never saw a woman outside of the stall, so i was spared the embarrassment. apparently im now a criminal in Idaho.
bathroom ban
No bathrooms allowed, use forests.
Then they flag you for indecent exposure, an put you on the sex offender registry, which they can then use to say “See? They’re sexual deviants!” all while unironically supporting the Epstein class.
The Idaho Fraternal Order of Police also opposed the bill, with President Bryan Lovell warning that “in many circumstances, there is no clear or reasonable way for officers to make that determination without engaging in questioning or investigative actions that could be viewed as invasive and inappropriate.” The Idaho Sheriffs’ Association joined the opposition as well.
God damn, even the pigs don’t want this
It’s a no-win situation for them. Even they understand they got enough problems without this new MAGA virtue signalling hornet’s nest over an issue that doesn’t even really exist.
If you operate a business out of your own home do you have to get a second bathroom installed?
You may not be aware of this fact, but all trans people have two of every hygiene tool in their home, including toilets. It’s like kashrut, but for cleaning your butt instead of eating food.
I didn’t know that and its very interesting, but as a definitely cis person I am worried about how this will impact me as a small business owner.
That’s the next step: eliminating gender neutral bathrooms in houses. All must have two bathrooms minimum
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what democracy dude, the us government doesn’t give a single fuck what any of us want. government chooses to criminalize our existence and your idea is that those same genocidal freaks should have all the power. fuck off
26% of Americans support our right to use the right bathroom. The majority wants youth healthcare banned. A sports ban. They oppose making insurance cover our care. The general public cannot get their way on our rights.
oh in that case i’m sure the bourgeoisie and their fascist lapdogs would have just done the right thing if not for the nefarious will of the citizens. like there’s been a massive blitz from those in power to build up as much resentment and hatred for trans people as possible to make us into an effective scapegoat and wedge issue, no shit that is reflected in opinion polls! americans are hateful scumbags i’m not arguing against that, i’m against the idea that democracy itself is the problem here
Democracy is meaningless if it is unable to protect the rights of minority groups. Those rights should be granted regardless of the will of the majority. When “democracy” gets to decide someone’s person-hood, you are not living in a democracy.
Moreover, I don’t want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a dictatorship of the proletariat .
Those rights should be granted regardless of the will of the majority.
💯 Thank you now I can delete my overly long response. Eventually I’ll learn brevity.
You can’t depoliticize this issue by making rights something that exist above political processes. There is no such thing as “natural rights,” there are only legal rights, and what those should be is inevitably a thing that humans must decide on. That is foregone, you cannot change it. The only thing you can do is decide whether it is a ruling elite who decide what those legal rights are or if it is the people who do, i.e. is it minoritarian or majoritarian rule?
The best means that we have for the actual and enduring safety of minorities is broad democratic organization. Otherwise, you will get a bureaucratic system that is free to trample on the rights that you have assigned it to protect.
Moreover, I don’t want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a dictatorship of the proletariat .
I really struggle to think of a plausible definition for these terms that does not make this statement contradictory. A democracy is the rule of the majority, and a dictatorship of the proletariat is the domination (“dictatorship”) of the working people as a class (who constitute the vast majority of the population) over the bourgeoisie. An actual dictatorship of the proletariat is definitionally democratic.
Democracy is meaningless if it is unable to protect the rights of minority groups. Those rights should be granted regardless of the will of the majority. When “democracy” gets to decide someone’s person-hood, you are not living in a democracy.
Where did I argue against this? If anything you are agreeing with me, that the US is not a democracy!
Moreover, I don’t want to live in a democracy. I want to live in a dictatorship of the proletariat .
A dictatorship of the proletariat is a democracy. Jesus christ, you people aren’t communists, you are wannabe aristocrats with a red tint
yea I think they mean “liberal democracy”
Yeah, I did. The idea of a democracy has become tainted by liberalism that it needs to be reframed.
I agree with intersectional struggle, lgbtq protection and liberation, and so forth - but anyone who imagines a change in process automatically entails a change to fully progressive social values of a populace is deluding themselves. We would still have to struggle against racism and lgbtq bigotry after a socialist revolution. The thinking is that without fascists mass producing hateful propaganda and removing the material incentives for bigotry, the population will be much more amenable to social liberation as well. People will begin to live in solidarity and community with one another and, as history has reliably indicated, then become more tolerant and even accepting. It will BECOME the majority opinion, and then and ONLY then will it be protected as a right. We can identify it as something that should be a right through philosophy, but to think that alone makes it one is idealism. Rights in practice are something people ensure, not good arguments or reasoning.
+1 to your take
Thank you. We can see this historically with how Cuba for example had to actively combat homophobia, or the efforts of the CPC to liberate women. Once the mechanisms of capitalist oppression are destroyed, the material basis for the subjugation of particularly oppressed people goes with it, and true social change becomes possible. Of course, the active effort of revolutionary leaders is necessary while this process occurs to prevent reactionaries from continuing to oppress vulnerable people, much like how the worker’s state itself must be protected during the transition from capitalism to communism, but I don’t believe this means that it is no longer democratic.
I also feel that giving up on the term “democracy” altogether is not the right approach. It is no secret even among many of the more reactionary people I know that the US is not democratic. I mean, like one out of three Americans doesn’t bother voting, and every one of those I’ve discussed it with recognize it’s because voting doesn’t do anything. Decrying democracy as a whole weakens our rhetorical position, and is easy for people to misunderstand and our enemies to demonize. We should be loud and clear that the liberal capitalist “democracy” is anything but, not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In any case, I could have done a better job communicating without lashing out. While I hope it’s understandable why I was so upset, I’m of course not the only one affected by all of this. I should have recognized that I wasn’t in a good emotional position and taken some time to try and calm down before responding. So I’m sorry @DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net, @BountifulEggnog@hexbear.net, and @Hestia@hexbear.net for lashing out at you.
That sounds like some kind of woke commie shit
Fuck yeah
I think there is a lot of confusion and overreaction here to the term “democracy”. I believe what Dragon was meaning is western “liberal democracy”. I don’t think any of us here want to continue to live in a “liberal democracy”. Western countries have diluted the meaning. I think to most people, “democracy” means “liberal democracy” which we all critique. Dragon did not say they wanted an authoritarian fascist bourgeois dictatorship or whatever everyone seems to be making of this. They seem to want a system where the rights of minorities are protected over the desires of a reactionary population. We know in the imperial core, a significant portion of the population will need to be reeducated before they can participate in a dictatorship of the proletariat. A revolution is inherently “authoritarian”. We need to take our rights back from the bourgeoisie and the reactionaries. At some point, these rights will need to be enforced by some revolutionary entity, before the reactionaries have a say in it. They can join the dictatorship of the proletariat once their brainworms have been sufficiently nullified. If you handed them a true democracy, right now as things are, they would use that democracy to choose barbarism. I do not want a system where some majority can decide to remove the rights of some minority group simply because the majority is bigoted. Democracy without a socialist revolution is just a popularity contest.
Thanks for the explanation, but to be completely honest I’ll admit I have deep seated distrust of democratic norms (paradoxically I am also against firm hierarchies including bureaucracies) and it’s probably going to take the rest of the decade for me to unlearn.
But while I didn’t think of it this way, you explained the dilemma better than I can so I wanted to write and give you the credit.
I understand that there’s nothing I can do to talk you out of Sephiroth-posting generally, but Jesus fucking Christ dude could you not be advocating for a bureaucratic dictatorship over democracy because your neighborhood is mostly chuds or whatever it is? It’s so horribly backwards and it’s a detriment to everyone’s political consciousness. At least keep it in your journal like Proudhon or something.
Wow so you would rather have mob rule and have the government control all aspects of life because of what you think is morally correct? That’s the problem with you tankies. Complete authoritarian mindsets based on self-righteousness.
Are you being sarcastic / ironic or do you mean this? Because apparently 2 people thought you were being serious and reported you but this reads as sarcasm to me. Internet is hard
Autocracies and oligarchies don’t have the best civil rights track records either
We want a worker’s democracy, not whatever farce liberalism gives us
Idaho bans toilets. If you shit you go to jail.
