California's Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined a coalition of 19 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief supporting transgender students challenging Idaho's law banning them from using bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. The coalition argues the law is unconstitutional, violates the Equal Protection Clause, and ignores ten years of California evidence showing that inclusive policies protect trans students without harming anyone else.

What Idaho's law actually does

Idaho's House Bill 264 bans transgender people from using restrooms and other sex-separated facilities consistent with their gender identity in public educational institutions, including universities and community colleges. Two transgender college students filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Idaho in July 2025, arguing that HB 264 violates their rights under the Fourteenth Amendment and under Titles VII and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They asked the court to issue a preliminary injunction preventing Idaho from enforcing the law against them while the case proceeds.

Think about what that law means in practice. You are a student. You go to lectures, you study, you eat lunch, you have a full day of ordinary life to get through. And every single time you need to use a restroom, the state has passed a law designed to make your gender identity a legal obstacle. That is not a minor inconvenience; it is a daily, repeated signal that you are not recognised as who you are, that your presence is contested, that you do not fully belong.

The coalition's argument

Attorney General Bonta and the coalition of 19 states are not just arguing that Idaho's law is cruel. They are arguing that it is unconstitutional, that it stigmatises transgender students and denies them access to common school facilities on the basis of their gender identity, in direct violation of the Equal Protection Clause. They are also pointing to something Idaho's legislators appear to have simply set aside: the evidence. California has required all schools to permit students to use single-sex facilities consistent with their gender identity since 2014. That is over a decade of data. The coalition's position is that inclusive policies have produced real, demonstrable benefits for transgender students, and have done so without compromising the privacy or safety of anyone else.

Bonta put it plainly: "No one should feel uncomfortable or be afraid to use a public restroom because of their gender identity." That sentence should not need to be a legal argument. Here we are though.

What California's decade of experience actually shows

The debate about bathroom access is often framed as though it is theoretical, as though nobody really knows what happens when trans students are allowed to use facilities consistent with who they are. California is not theoretical. California has been doing this for more than ten years, across thousands of schools, covering hundreds of thousands of students. And the position of 19 attorneys general, backed by that experience, is that it works. Trans students are safer. The sky has not fallen. Other students have not been harmed. The feared consequences have not materialised, because they were never grounded in evidence to begin with.

That matters, because the argument against inclusion always positions itself as cautious, as protective, as acting in the interest of safety. What California's record demonstrates is that exclusion is not the safe option. Exclusion is the harmful one. It is trans students who are made unsafe when the law tells them their identity is a problem to be managed.

The broader picture

The 19 attorneys general who joined this brief represent states including Washington, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia. That is a substantial coalition, and it reflects something real: a significant portion of the United States is actively defending trans rights in the courts, at the same time as another portion is legislating to remove them.

I think about what it means to be a trans young person watching this. In some states, the law is fighting for you. In others, the law is being used against you. Your experience of being a student, of having a safe school day, of being allowed to exist without legal interference, depends enormously on which side of a state line you happen to live on. That is not a system working fairly; it is a system in conflict with itself, and trans students are the ones absorbing the cost of that conflict.

The lawsuit is proceeding. The preliminary injunction request is before the court. Whatever happens next, the fact that 20 attorneys general have come together to say that inclusive policies work, that exclusion is unconstitutional, and that trans students deserve safety and belonging, is not nothing. It is the kind of institutional backing that can shift what feels politically possible, even in places where things currently feel very bleak.

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Dr Helen Webberley is a gender specialist, medical educator, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender identity, trans healthcare, and the lives of trans people and their families.