A legal challenge to Idaho’s law requiring students to use bathrooms matching their biological sex in K-12 public schools has been dismissed, leaving the law fully in effect across the state.
The Boise High School Sexuality and Gender Alliance dropped the case after one transgender student who was a plaintiff died by suicide in late January at the age of 16, and another plaintiff stopped attending the school. The group’s lawyers filed a legal agreement Wednesday requesting dismissal.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador hailed the end of the case Thursday, stating: “From the district court to the Ninth Circuit, we defended Idaho’s right to protect students’ privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms. This law is fully in effect.”
The case had previously been appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which in March 2025 rejected a longer block on the law. The court ruled the state had identified an important governmental objective — protecting bodily privacy — under intermediate scrutiny.
The dismissal is separate from a newer legal challenge filed in April 2026 by the ACLU, which targets Idaho’s subsequent House Bill 752 — a broader law signed by Governor Brad Little that extends the bathroom protection requirement to private businesses and makes violations a criminal offense. The first offense under that law is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison; a second offense within five years is a felony punishable by up to five years.
Idaho has built the most comprehensive set of biological sex protections for women and girls of any state in the country. The school bathroom law is now settled law. The broader criminal statute takes effect July 1. The ACLU’s new lawsuit will face the same result as the last one.
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