How a Lawsuit Settlement in Idaho Provides a Model for States to Protect Girls in School Bathrooms

Jane never planned on being the bleeding edge of the conservative legal movement. She was just a sophomore girl at Boise High School in Idaho.

But one day, she heard deep grunting sounds from the stall next to her while in the girls’ restroom at school. Horrified, she looked down and saw a pair of shoes pointed towards her. She quickly left the stall—and soon after, the adjacent stall opened and a male student walked out.

Jane’s parents immediately confronted school administrators. Rather than address the parents’ concerns, the school officials explained how they had given express permission to this transgender-identifying male student to use the girls’ facilities as part of a “gender support plan.”

Those “gender support plans” have been illegal under Idaho law since the state first passed its school bathroom law in 2023. Under the law, schools are required to separate bathrooms by biological sex—and if they allow males in girls’ spaces, they can be sued for $5,000 per incident, plus attorney fees.

We at the IFPC Legal Center sued the school district on behalf of Jane and her family, and now the school district’s insurance company has shelled out $34,000 to settle the lawsuit. Jane’s case appears to be the first in the country in which a female student recovered funds against her school after they exposed her to a male student.

This groundbreaking case provides a model for states to successfully protect the privacy and safety of students in their bathrooms. Conservative states need to stop accepting defeat. We can win—and we must win—in order to provide a safe learning environment for girls.

As Jane’s lawyers, we thought it important to highlight this story so other states can know how we did it.

Here’s the lesson: Winning doesn’t come from virtue-signaling platitudes. States need laws that are defensible. They need laws that are enforceable. And they need laws that bring results.

It’s not enough to pass laws to sound nice or win the next Republican primary. Too many noble efforts have been wasted by cavalier conservatives unwilling to do the hard work of carefully assessing how to make legal changes that will pass court review. And when those laws are passed, leftist lawfare groups immediately run to the courthouse to challenge those laws. They’ll only stand up if they’re drafted well—conservatives must do the hard work of making sure the bill is up for the task.

That’s not to say we must be beholden to bad precedent. Conservative laws can and should push the envelope on important issues. But sloppy drafting hands liberal judges a silver platter loaded with excuses to throw out the law. One wrong word, one unresearched phrase, or even a poorly phrased remark by a legislator during debate can give a court everything it needs to shred a new law.

We did the careful drafting necessary for good law here in Idaho. Our policy team at Idaho Family Policy Center poured hundreds of hours into carefully researching and drafting the school bathroom law before championing it in the Legislature. That “measure twice, cut once” approach directly translated into a legal victory at the notoriously liberal 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The panel was clearly unenthusiastic about the law, but at the end of the day, they still held that the constitutional challenge to the law was “unlikely to succeed on the merits.”

Surviving court challenges is just the first step. A good law does nothing if it doesn’t get enforced. And sometimes, government officials just don’t want to enforce the laws. Just take a look at our country’s obscenity laws—most hardcore porn is illegal on paper, but in practice nobody is willing to prosecute the producers of online porn. Or marijuana: It’s federally illegal, but if you live in any major metropolitan area, chances are you smell it on a near-daily basis. And sometimes, officials just thumb their nose at the law.

Here in Boise, for example, our mayor flew a Pride flag for a whole year after legislation prohibiting it was passed—all because the legislation lacked an enforcement mechanism.

Most laws are contingent on the political willpower of whoever happens to be in office. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In Idaho, we’ve started using private causes of action to ensure that victims of legal violations can recover for their harms.

Private causes of action have been the cornerstone of American constitutional law, especially after they were enshrined in Title 42, Section 1983 of the U.S. Code. That’s the statute that built the civil rights legal movement in the 1960s, and it’s the law driving most of today’s constitutional challenges.

Private causes of action ensure that the laws can always be enforced—even when a school in a blue city like Boise decides it doesn’t want to play by the rules.

Fighting off lawsuits is expensive. And if the matter is tendered to an insurance carrier for defense and settlement (like in this case), real systemic changes can happen. Insurance companies are no bastions of conservatism, but their appetite for underwriting woke resistance to the law is usually smaller than their policy limits. This incentivizes quick compliance from leftist governments when challenged.

Idaho has enacted legal protections for young women in school bathrooms. Those laws have been challenged and upheld in court. And now, a lawsuit to enforce those laws has resulted in a settlement for the young girl who was forced to encounter a male in her school bathroom. We can win—Idaho proves that.

Will other states follow our lead?

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

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