Idaho House passes bill to force schools and doctors to out transgender minors to their parents

The Idaho House widely passed a bill Wednesday that would require school officials and health professionals to out transgender minors to their parents, or face lawsuits.

House Bill 822 would require schools, health care providers and child care providers to notify parents within three days after the entities receive “any request by the minor student to participate in or facilitate the social transition of the minor student.”

That would include: Using a different name than their legal name, including a nickname; using pronouns or titles that do not align with their sex assigned at birth; using restrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms, or overnight lodging that are meant to be used by another sex; and playing on a sports team of another sex.

Entities would be banned from assisting a minor’s social transition efforts without written consent from their parent.

The attorney general could seek up to $100,000 in civil fines for entities that violate the bill.

The House passed the bill on a 59-9 near party-line vote. Only one House Republican lawmaker, Rep. Jack Nelsen of Jerome, voted against the bill. All eight Democratic House lawmakers who were present voted against the bill.

The bill is sponsored by Rep. Bruce Skaug, a Nampa Republican lawmaker who led efforts to criminalize gender-affirming care for all minors in Idaho and expanded the ban to taxpayer funds, which prevented Medicaid from covering gender-affirming care and prompted an eastern Idaho clinic to halt offering gender-affirming care.

Skaug presented lawmakers with copies of six Idaho school district policies that he said threaten to punish teachers if they do not conceal information about students’ social transitions from their parents.

“This loophole needs to be closed about parental knowledge,” Skaug said on the House floor Wednesday.

Major medical groups say gender-affirming care is medically necessary and safe. Some European nations are tightening standards for gender affirming-care.

Skaug’s bill would allow parents to sue health care providers, schools and child care providers that violate the bill.

The bill now heads to the Senate. To become law, Idaho bills must pass the House and Senate, and avoid the governor’s veto.

Republicans prevented Democrats from filing report

A handful of Democratic lawmakers debated against the bill.

Rep. Annie Henderson Haws, a Boise Democrat, argued the bill is meddling with professions Idaho is struggling to attract and retain: Teachers, doctors and child care providers.

Haws, an attorney, argued the bill’s up to $100,000 fine is “grossly disproportionate” to other offenses in Idaho law. She ran through a list of other fines in state laws related to parental rights: $5,000 per incident of violating the state’s school transgender bathroom ban, and $2,500 in statutory damages is allowed in instances of false reports of child abuse.

“I ask you what we are doing in this House, where we are knowingly passing potentially unconstitutional statute – based on this fine alone. And our taxpayers are going to have to pay that legal bill,” Haws said.

But when House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, tried to formally file a report that delved into that issue, and others, Republicans stopped her.

House Majority Leader Jason Monks, R-Meridian, successfully moved to suspend the rules to stop the minority report from being entered into the House journal, a summary of the House’s actions that is published daily.

Monks’ motion – which is not debatable – quickly passed on a 57-11 vote.

Then House leaders ordered a brief break, to pause debate, and soon returned to wrap up for the day.

“I do feel that it was, frankly, an abuse of supermajority power to suspend the rules that we have all put into effect for the sole purpose of preventing the minority viewpoint from being heard and reported,” Rubel said on the floor, moments before adjournment.

What the Democrats’ report on the bill said

On Monday, the House Judiciary, Rules and Administration Committee’s acting chairman, Rep. Joe Alfieri, cut off debate and public testimony early. No doctors testified on the bill, and audience members walked out and shouted about the dangers of the bill.

The committee only allowed 14 minutes of testimony, as it rushed to finish the bill to return to the House floor for an afternoon session, the Democrats’ report said.

Rep. Chris Mathias, a Boise Democrat who serves on the committee, told reporters around 30 people had signed up to testify against the bill, and 10 were set to testify in favor.

Testimony ended up not representing that divide, he said, because more people in favor were allowed to testify – including two who do not live in Idaho.

The eight-page minority report delved into more issues with the bill, including calling the up to $100,000 fines allowed likely unconstitutional under the Idaho Constitution’s clause on excessive fines.

“HB 822 is constitutionally vulnerable, operationally unworkable, and harmful to the very children and professionals it purports to protect,” the minority report concluded.

House Majority Leader Jason Monks tells reporters why he moved to suppress Democrats’ report

Monks told reporters that Republicans did not want the report in the record.

“We thought it was a little bit, some of it was disingenuous, criticizing the chairman of the way he handled the committee. And we didn’t feel like that was fair to be put into the journal,” he said.

Monks also said he did not know the last time House Democrats had filed a minority report.

Asked about Rubel’s criticism that Republicans – who have supermajority control of both chambers of the Legislature – abused their power in suppressing the minority report, Monks said he thought that was a fair criticism and something Republicans “always have to be concerned about.”

“If you look at our 61 members, you will find people on as far to the left as you’ll find them as far to the right,” Monks told reporters. “And so when we always talk about us being a supermajority, I always kind of giggle a little bit, thinking, ‘We don’t all agree on anything!’ But occasionally we come together and we come up with something that the majority of us agree with.”