Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador targets sex changes on birth certificates
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador on Monday announced a move to restore state laws banning transgender people from changing their birth certificates to reflect their gender identity.
In a motion filed with Idaho’s U.S. District Court in early October, Labrador’s office argued that recent U.S. Supreme Court rulings overrode a 2018 injunction by the District Court that put an end to that ban.
Until 2018, under the Idaho Vital Statistics Law, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare barred changes to the sex listed in birth certificates unless there had been an error in recording the sex at birth, according to court records. But “automatically and categorically” rejecting transgender individuals’ applications to change the sex listed on their birth certificates is unconstitutional, U.S. District Court Judge Candy Dale concluded, prohibiting the state from making those automatic rejections.
This year, though, the Supreme Court ruled that federal courts can only issue injunctions affecting the specific parties in a lawsuit, not “universal injunctions” affecting others, Labrador said in a Monday news release. The court also ruled that laws like Idaho’s don’t discriminate against transgender people because they apply equally to everyone, Labrador said.
“For seven years, Idaho has been blocked from enforcing a law requiring birth certificates to reflect biological facts recorded at birth,” Labrador said in his release. “Now we’re asking that court to lift the block and let Idaho enforce our law.”
The law, if enforced, will put transgender and nonbinary Idahoans in “unsafe positions,” potentially outing them if their physical appearance does not match their official documents, said Nikson Mathews, a transgender Boise resident and policy advocate for the LGBTQ+ community. It could also impede community members’ ability to access other documentation, such as passports and drivers licenses, Mathews told the Idaho Statesman.
Labrador argued that changing birth certificates “endangers patients and undermines science” by manipulating the records used for public health research and treatment protocols. Mathews called that argument “disingenuous.” Doctors determine care on an individual basis and don’t rely solely on sex to decide on treatments, they said.
Lambda Legal, a national legal organization that focuses on LGBTQ+ communities and filed the lawsuit against the state, has called the state policy archaic, “out of step with the rest of America” and dangerous.
”Forcing transgender Idahoans to go through life with inaccurate birth certificates, a basic form of identification, unnecessarily exposed them to discrimination, harassment, and violence,” said Kara Ingelhart, a Lambda Legal law fellow, in a 2018 news release after the injunction.
In 2020, despite the 2018 court order, the Idaho Legislature passed a bill that mandated that “statistics and materials of fact” on birth certificates, including sex, could only be challenged in court and on the basis of “fraud, duress, or material mistake of fact.” In 2024, the Legislature amended that law to “provide clear procedures for correcting genuine errors on birth certificates,” said Damon Sidur, a spokesperson for Labrador. Because of the 2018 injunction, the laws have not been enforced.
This story was originally published October 21, 2025 at 2:08 PM.
