A federal judge blocked most of Idaho's transgender bathroom law days before it was due to take effect, finding it likely unconstitutional because no one, including law enforcement, could agree on how to enforce it. The law would have criminalised trans people for using public bathrooms that don't match their sex assigned at birth. Courts keep returning to the question the legislation refuses to answer: how, exactly, would this work in practice?

What the law would have done

House Bill 752, signed by Republican governor Brad Little in March, made it a criminal offence to knowingly enter a public bathroom or changing room designated for the "opposite biological sex" in government buildings and places of public accommodation. A first offence carried up to a year in jail. A second could be prosecuted as a felony carrying up to five years in prison. Five years in prison for using a toilet.

Six transgender Idaho residents, represented by the ACLU, the ACLU of Idaho, and Lambda Legal, challenged the law. On 16 June, US District Judge Amanda K Brailsford granted a preliminary injunction, extending protection not just to those six plaintiffs but to a provisionally certified statewide class of trans Idaho residents. Days before the law was due to take effect on 1 July, it was stopped.

The moment the state's own argument collapsed

The most revealing part of Judge Brailsford's 30-page ruling comes from what happened in the courtroom itself. Defendants, defending the law, suggested that law enforcement could use DNA testing to determine a person's biological sex. The judge pointed out that police generally cannot collect DNA without consent, a warrant, or other legal authority. So the state's answer to "how would you enforce this?" was: DNA tests you cannot legally take.

That tells you something important about what these laws are actually for. They are not designed to be enforced through any coherent mechanism. They are designed to make trans people afraid, to make using a public bathroom feel like a risk, to make existing in public feel precarious.

Judge Brailsford put it plainly in her ruling: "Different officers could reasonably reach different conclusions regarding identical conduct, not because the facts differ, but because the statute furnishes no standards by which those facts are to be evaluated." A law that cannot be applied consistently is a law built for selective harassment, not public safety.

What the ruling actually does and does not do

ACLU lawyer Barbara Schwabauer said it well: "No one should be forced to choose between the threat of arrest for being themselves in public or the threat of harassment and violence for acting the way the state wants them to be." That is the bind these laws create. They do not offer trans people a safe option. They offer a choice between two kinds of danger.

Lambda Legal counsel Kell Olson described the ruling as allowing trans people throughout Idaho to find and use a public restroom without the fear of arrest looming over them, while the longer fight continues. That longer fight matters: Idaho attorney general Raul Labrador has said he plans to appeal, arguing the law is not vague and that "biological sex is not vague, and neither is this law."

He is wrong about the law's vagueness, and the judge has explained why. But there is also a more fundamental problem with the claim. "Biological sex" sounds precise until you ask what it means for a trans woman who has lived as a woman for decades, whose documents reflect that, whose neighbours, colleagues, and family know her as a woman. Which bathroom is she supposed to use? Which one would the attorney general point her towards? And who exactly is going to check?

The injunction also does not cover everything. Parts of the law relating to locker rooms, showers, and changing rooms remain in effect. Trans people in Idaho are not fully protected, and the legal situation will continue to shift as the appeal proceeds.

A toilet door was never the right place to police identity

Trans people have been using public bathrooms for as long as there have been public bathrooms. Nothing about that changed when these laws began appearing. What changed is that a political movement decided to make an ordinary act of daily life into a site of confrontation, a place where trans people's right to exist in public could be contested, door by door.

The practical harm is not abstract. Trans people, particularly trans women, face real risk of harassment and violence in public spaces. Laws like this do not reduce that risk; they amplify it. They signal that trans people are unwelcome, that their presence is suspect, that ordinary strangers are licensed to challenge them. The bathroom becomes a place of anxiety rather than a convenience everyone uses without a second thought.

What Judge Brailsford has done is simple and necessary: she has asked the state to explain how the law works, and the state could not answer. Courts will keep asking that question, because it is the right one. And until legislators can answer it, these laws should not be allowed to operate.

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Dr Helen Webberley is a Gender Specialist, Medical Educator, writer, and advocate, and the founder of GenderGP. She writes about gender diversity, trans healthcare, and the lives at the centre of both.