By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
Less than a month after Gov. Brad Little signed into law House Bill 752, criminalizing transgender people using bathrooms according to their identity, the legislation is going to court.
According to the Idaho Capital Sun, the suit filed in federal court April 29 names six transgender Idahoans as plaintiffs against Attorney General Raúl Labrador and statewide county prosecutors, including Bonner County Prosecuting Attorney Louis Marshall.
According to the class action suit, H.B. 752 “carries harsh criminal penalties including imprisonment for up to one year for a first offense and up to five years for a repeat offense. H.B. 752 presents transgender Idahoans with an impossible choice: use a restroom that does not align with their gender identity and risk severe physical and psychological harms, or continue to use restrooms in public in accordance with their gender identity and risk a criminal record and imprisonment.”
Sponsored by Rep. Cornel Rasor, R-Sagle — and crafted with Scott Herndon, who is seeking the Dist. 1 Senate seat in the May 19 primary — H.B. 752 passed the House 54-15-1, and the Senate on a vote of 28-7. Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, and Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, both supported the bill, which is scheduled to go into effect July 1.
Represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU-Idaho. Lambda Legal, Alturas Law Group and Munger, Tolles & Olson, the plaintiffs’ suit argues that H.B. 752 is “part of a broader assault on the lives of transgender Idahoans” and calls it “ill-conceived and counter-productive.”
“This law upends public life not only for transgender Idahoans but for everyone who uses public restrooms in Idaho,” according to the suit. “It creates confusion, increases suspicion and surveillance and disrupts the status quo ante without any demonstrated need to do so.”
Ultimately, the lawsuit contends that H.B. 752 represents a violation of due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
In floor testimony, Rasor said the bill “prevents discomfort” and safeguards “privacy, safety and dignity, especially for women and girls.”
Rasor, who is running for reelection to the Dist. 1B House seat in the May 19 primary, did not respond to a request for comment from the Reader on the current litigation.
The roots of H.B. 752 are in Sandpoint, when a lifeguard at the Litehouse-YMCA alleged in October 2025 that a transgender woman had used the women’s locker room at the facility.
While no police report was filed nor any evidence ever produced to substantiate the claim — or that any such “incident” occurred — the public furor whipped up on Facebook made its way to the Sandpoint City Council, which after two emotionally charged meetings voted in November 2025 to amend the city’s longstanding non-discrimination ordinance, removing from the definition of protected classes, “gender related identity, appearance, expression or behavior of an individual regardless of a person’s assigned sex at birth.”
At the time, Herndon testified before the council that multiple bills would come forward in the 2026 Legislature addressing transgender people’s access to multi-use facilities. One of those ultimately turned out to be H.B. 752, which Herndon worked on with Rasor and which both are currently using in their May 19 GOP primary campaigns.
Meanwhile, statewide law enforcement opposed the bill, with the Idaho Chiefs of Police Association stating H.B. 752 “would create unnecessary law and place Idaho law enforcement in impossible situations,” including placing “an unrealistic and absurd burden on Idaho law enforcement officers to somehow know, or be able to readily identify visually [the] biological sex of another human being.”
Speaking to the Reader following news of the lawsuit, Herndon said he’s “not concerned about that. I think we’ll be fine with that in the long-run.”
“Lawmakers pass laws and, if we do it right, we pass laws that will withstand judicial scrutiny,” he said, later adding, “I don’t mind things going to court. … Literally that’s exactly what the court system is for. The first purpose of government is to have just criminal laws.”
