Idaho
US Supreme Court allows Idaho gender-affirming care ban for minors to go into effect
The US Supreme Court granted an emergency request for stay led by Idaho officials, allowing the state to temporarily enforce a statewide ban on gender-affirming care for certain minors. This ban is one of the first cases related to transgender health care to reach the nation’s highest court. Labrador v. Poe is the case that challenged the law enacted in Idaho last year, which prohibits treatments such as puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors.
Under the new law, physicians who provide gender-affirming care to transgender children could face up to 10 years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines. While the law can now be enforced statewide, it cannot be applied against the two plaintiffs who challenged it. Often, emergency docket decisions do not include reasoning. However, this 34-page decision included concurrences by Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The court’s written opinion emphasized that this case poses a question about “the propriety of universal injunctive relief, a question of great significance that has needed the Court’s attention for some time.” In other words, the Ninth Circuit granted relief to the plaintiffs and additionally decided the Idaho law’s enactment was to be halted. The Supreme Court ruled this was an overstep of the lower court’s authority. The court’s three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, objected to this decision, arguing that the law should have remained entirely blocked and that it was the natural order of a case to be challenged and move through the lower courts appropriately.
The state of Idaho and its Attorney General Raul Labrador argue that “Every day Idaho’s law remains enjoined exposes vulnerable children to risky and dangerous medical procedures and infringes Idaho’s sovereign power to enforce its democratically enacted law.” The state says that since the plaintiffs both want access to a single procedure, it is unfair that the Ninth Circuit’s injunction applies to all 20+ procedures that the Idaho law regulates as they are two minors and their parents, and the injunction covers 2 million.
The plaintiffs, two transgender teenagers whose identities are protected, argue that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, enforceable under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which protects individuals and groups from discrimination by the government. The brief for the teens cites that the new law does not ban cisgender boys who are forecasted to have a post-pubertal height of 5’4″ or shorter as they may be treated with testosterone for “short stature.” Idaho doctors are thus free to prescribe testosterone to cisgender boys, including to affirm cisgender boys’ gender identity with overdeveloped breast tissue. Similar differences are allowed for cisgender girls to receive estrogen for specific delayed puberty issues. Thus, counsel argues that the law has “nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with expressing disapproval of, and stigmatizing transgender people.”
This case is part of broader state jurisprudence across the country, with more than 20 conservative states enacting similar bans targeting care for transgender youth. This spring, appeals concerning similar laws in Tennessee and Kentucky will be up for consideration by the justices.
The Idaho State Police say that Robert Giesick, 40, from Billings is the man missing in a crash on State Highway 55 near Cascade, about 80 miles north of Boise.
A pick-up truck driven by Giesick ended up in the Payette River after a head-on crash with another pick-up truck.
Watch Idaho crash story here:
Idaho state troopers identify Billings man missing in traffic accident
“I was able to find some people that saw a male, an adult man, swimming for the shore from the truck,” said Idaho State Trooper Richard Knapp, who attempted to rescue Giesick. “Unfortunately he didn’t make it. He got swept downriver. Witnesses lost sight of him, and that was the last time anybody saw him.”
Knapp says search crews looked extensively for the 40-year-old, but after 24 hours, it became a recovery effort for the Idaho Mountain Search and Rescue Unit.
After that on Monday came the monumental task of removing the pickup truck from the raging water.
“It was an intensive a recovery, honestly, our operators were tested, their knowledge was tested,” said Mark Boisvert, Code Red Towing owner. “They said it was a very extreme recovery for them, more than usual.”
Idaho business owners have less than a month to decide how to comply with a new state law criminally banning trans people from using restrooms that align with their gender identity.
The law is set to take effect July 1, which would make it a misdemeanor for the first offense and a felony for subsequent offenses within five years.
It’s currently being challenged in federal court by the ACLU of Idaho.
On Tuesday, a panel sponsored by Idaho Employment Lawyers encouraged companies to prepare now as if the law will remain in effect as litigation continues.
Cody Earl, a lawyer for St. Luke’s Health System who spoke on the panel in his personal capacity, said there are several paths businesses can take.
Converting all bathrooms into single-use, gender-neutral facilities is one option, though it could be costly for larger businesses. Earl said companies could take other steps to make the transition more affordable.
“Even if it is a gender-specific restroom, [adding signage] that indicates where the closest gender-neutral restroom is so you could at least show that you’re giving employees an option or a choice,” he said.
Simply adding locks and only allowing one person at a time to a multi-stall bathroom is another choice, though panelists said that could be problematic for businesses with large amounts of customers, like restaurants and bars.
Idaho Employment Lawyers owner Pam Howland said companies also need to consider how this will affect their staff.
“This could definitely create some culture issues,” said Howland. “Do you have the policies you need to ensure your expectations as an employer of respect and civility are being followed? Possibly code of conduct provisions related to that? How about privacy?”
Those policies could include limiting or outright banning recording at the workplace.
Another legal wrinkle to complying with the law, the panel said, is that precedent in both the U.S. Supreme Court and 9th Circuit Court of Appeals prohibit discrimination based on someone’s gender identity.
Gender dysphoria, a mental health designation that causes severe distress to someone when their sex doesn’t align with their gender identity, has been considered a protected condition under the Americans with Disabilities Act in certain cases.
Republican state lawmakers argued earlier this year that Idaho needs to take this first-in-the-nation step to protect women and girls when they use the restroom in private businesses.
A 2025 study out of UCLA hasn’t found any increased risk to safety by allowing transgender people to use restrooms aligning with their gender identity.
A federal court in Boise will hear arguments over whether to approve or reject a preliminary injunction on June 5.
Copyright 2026 Boise State Public Radio
Remember that 250 years ago, nobody had ever heard of Idaho, and the name was mostly made up by an entrepreneur who impressed the federal government with an exaggeration about his knowledge of indigenous culture. But a large number of people who live in the state can trace ancestry to the colonial era, and I believe most Americans still have a love of country, even if some polls give an indication they may not quite know how to express it.
I Was at the Heart of the Bicentennial
Looking back 50 years, I was in Washington, D.C. at the beginning of July. Washington also didn’t exist in 1776. My memory is that its reputation as a hot, sticky swamp was well earned. I traveled there with a history club from school. On a rattling old yellow bus. The city was packed, and many of the people on the streets were foreign tourists. It told me that despite the anti-Americanism common on streets elsewhere around the world, we were still fascinating others.
We’re Still One Nation
1976 was a unifying experience and followed a very turbulent previous 15 years. Some people fear the 250th jubilee won’t bring us together. Look, those rent-a-mobs you see on TV and online are actually a small fraction of America. Picnics in the park don’t make news. Riots and tear gas get the attention of newsrooms. There are still far more picnics.
The recent Memorial Day commemorations were reverential. Independence Day 2026 is going to be a party. The media focus will be on President Trump and a festival far away. Meanwhile, across Idaho, grills will be fired up, and we’ll be proud to be Americans.
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