Boise, Idaho — The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization — condemned today’s vote in the Idaho House to send S. 1016, legislation that expressly allows public works contractors to refuse to provide transgender people access to bathrooms consistent with their gender identity, to Gov. Little’s desk.

Human Rights State Legislative Director and Senior Counsel Cathryn Oakley issued the following statement today:

“It is despicable that Idaho politicians are moving at warp speed to impose new layers of discrimination against transgender people. Allowing government contractors to spend taxpayer money while actively discriminating against LGBTQ+ people is flat out wrong and immoral. Politicians should be working on ways to expand access to healthcare, lower costs for Idahoans, and improve education in Idaho, not wasting time on this ridiculous bill.”

So far in 2023, HRC is tracking more than 410 anti-LGBTQ+ bills that have been introduced in statehouses across the country. Approximately 180 of those bills would specifically restrict the rights of transgender people, the highest number of bills targeting transgender people in a single year to date.

So far this year, HRC is tracking:

• More than 100 bills that would prevent trans youth from being able to access age-appropriate, medically-necessary, best-practice health care; four have already become law, in Tennessee, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Utah,

• More bathroom ban bills filed than in any previous year,

• More than 80 curriculum censorship bills and 35 anti-drag performance bills.

Since the reviled HB2 was passed, and subsequently partially-repealed, in North Carolina, only three states – Tennessee, Alabama, and Oklahoma – have passed legislation mandating anti-transgender discrimination in bathrooms.

While “bathroom bills'' were very popular in 2016, the international condemnation heaped upon HB2 dissuaded many other states — including Texas — from advancing their own legislation. The Associated Press projected that HB2 passed in 2016 could have cost North Carolina $3.76 billion over 10 years from loss of business opportunities and impact the lives of countless students. Furthermore, legislation attacking transgender refuses to serve the major interests and needs of communities and families, who now pay the price as the consequences of failed leadership across the state. Transgender youth are denied their right to a public education when they’re prevented from accessing restroom facilities consistent with their gender identity, and “bathroom bills” are a violation of both Title IX and the U.S. Constitution.

The Human Rights Campaign is America’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. HRC envisions a world where LGBTQ+ people are embraced as full members of society at home, at work and in every community.