Boise takes down its Pride flag after Gov. Little signs new flag bill into law
Idaho lawmakers got what some of them have been wanting to do since 2025: The city of Boise took its pride flag down.
Idaho legislators first passed a law in 2025 preventing the state and local governments from flying most flags. During debate, supporters shared photos of Boise’s flag as an example of what they hoped the law would target, according to previous Statesman reporting. But the law lacked an enforcement mechanism, and Boise bypassed it anyway by making the pride flag and an organ donor flag into official city flags.
“The reason why we’re here today, on this bill, was to respond to the local mayor,” Rep. Ted Hill, R-Eagle, the bill’s sponsor, said during a hearing.
Lawmakers have been threatening to fix that ever since. It took a few separate attempts this session, but Hill got his bill across the finish line. It prevents cities or counties from flying any official flag established after 2023. The law adds penalties of $2,000 per flag per day and allows the attorney general to sue. Governments can still fly flags that are not religious, political or ideological.
“Because the law includes a substantial penalty – one that would ultimately fall on the taxpayers of Boise to shoulder – I decided to take down the city’s official Pride flag,” Boise Mayor Lauren McLean said in a statement. “But let me be clear: Boise’s values have not changed, and they are not defined by any single action taken at the Statehouse.”
Gov. Brad Little signed the bill into law at 11:44 a.m. Tuesday, a spokesperson, Emily Callihan told the Statesman. The city took the pride flag off the flagpoles just after noon, the mayor’s spokesperson, Emilee Ayers, said in an email.
Most of the workers, bikers and walkers downtown carrying lunches and drinks past the poles on Tuesday afternoon didn’t seem to notice. But one person around 12:30 p.m. took photos of the banners that remained. A couple of blocks away, people started setting up outside of the Capitol for Trans Day of Visibility, an annual event that typically occurs on the final day of March. As people waited, rainbow flags adorned a tent outside the Statehouse. The Boise City Council was expected to issue a proclamation celebrating the day at a meeting Tuesday afternoon.
Bonners Ferry also found a way around the 2025 law to keep flying its Canadian flag. Lawmakers added an amendment in the Senate on March 20 to allow international flags to be flown “in recognition of historic international and cross-border relations.”
McLean said the bill was “written with one purpose in mind: to prevent Boise from expressing our values by flying our official Pride flag.”
“We are reviewing all legal avenues and considering next steps,” McLean said in the statement. “Because when laws are used to target members of our community or limit our ability to express who we are, we have a responsibility to respond with both conviction and care.”
However, a lawyer previously told the Statesman that the law as written was likely valid.