Family with transgender daughter plans to close business, leave Idaho | Opinion
Eve Devitt recently came home to Boise from New York City to show her friend the beauty of Idaho.
They went to Bruneau Sand Dunes, Craters of the Moon, stopped at the Hemingway Memorial, went to Galena Lodge, and visited Stanley and McCall.
“She wanted to show her her state,” Eve’s father Michael Devitt told me in an interview. “And she’s like, ‘I can’t do that now. We could not make that trip again,’ which it’s kind of heartbreaking, because she loves Idaho so much.
“She loves Idaho, but Idaho doesn’t love her back.”
Eve is a transgender woman and as of July 1, it will be illegal for Eve to use a woman’s bathroom.
The Idaho Legislature passed and Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 752, which makes it a crime for any person to knowingly and willfully enter a restroom, changing room, locker room or shower room in a government-owned building or place of public accommodation designated for the opposite biological sex.
The first offense is a misdemeanor with up to 1 year in jail, and a second offense within five years is a felony with up to five years in prison.
Little signed the bill on International Transgender Day of Visibility, which Michael said was just another slap in the face.
“For our family, the thing that was just really a kick in the teeth, was that when Gov. Little signed this bill, he did it during the Trans Day of Visibility ceremony,” he said. “In case you ever wondered about the character of Brad Little — now we know… that was just cruel… reprehensible… that was intentional.”
House Bill 752 was also “the last straw” for the Devitt family, which includes Michael, his wife, Dr. Angie Devitt, who is president of the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians, and their two daughters, Eve and Isabelle.
Michael, who has run Focus Physical Therapy for the last 28 years in Boise, will close the business by September for the purpose of preparing to move out of state.
“Obviously, this law is a disaster for families like ours,” Michael wrote to his patients. “We can no longer take a road trip across our beloved state, or even enjoy a family night out at a restaurant, or a movie, without running the risk of Eve being charged and sent to prison merely for using the facilities.”
I first interviewed Michael and Eve back in 2023, when the Legislature passed and Little signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for minors. That was when Eve was 17, but Eve turned 18 in September, before the law went into effect the following January.
But over the past few years, the Idaho Legislature has continuously proposed and passed bills to place restrictions on transgender people, from banning them from sports to prohibiting trans people from changing the sex on their birth certificates and now telling them which bathrooms they’re legally allowed to use.
“We love Idaho, but our lawmakers and governor have spent the past five legislative sessions attacking Idaho’s transgender community, and there is a point at which hard decisions must be made,” Michael wrote to his patients.
All for a community of people that represents less than 1% of the population, and for a supposed problem that has zero evidence of existing in Idaho. Transgender women aren’t going into the women’s bathroom to attack and sexually assault women. Transgender men aren’t going into the men’s room to attack other men.
A 2025 study by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law looked at criminal reports of safety and privacy violations in localities with nondiscrimination laws that protected transgender access and localities that did not and found incidents of safety and privacy violations were rare, there was no significant difference in violations between the two types of localities and there was no evidence of an increase in violations from nondiscrimination laws.
The UCLA study also showed that transgender people get harassed or are denied use of a restroom – regardless of the gender-specific restroom they’re seeking to use. And in one study, 58% of respondents reported avoiding going out altogether due to a lack of access to a safe restroom.
With this new Idaho law, Eve will be forced to go to the men’s room, and people like Nikson Mathews, a transgender man, will be forced to use the women’s room. Monitoring and enforcement is going to get ugly and confusing.
The other thing this story illustrates is how everyone is affected by the state Legislature’s actions — whether you have a transgender family member or not. Michael Devitt’s patients will now have to find somewhere else to get physical therapy. And in a state with among the lowest number of doctors per capita, Idaho stands to lose another doctor in Angie Devitt, further exacerbating the problem and making it even harder for patients to find a doctor.
But for the Devitts, there’s little choice.
“Angie and I have just kind of come to the conclusion that anybody with transgender family members in Idaho, we’re basically in an abusive relationship with the state government,” Michael said. “And it just has to come down to, how many times do you have to get hit to realize there’s going to be another one coming, you know?”
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
This story was originally published April 8, 2026 at 4:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This column has been changed to correct the timing of the law that banned gender-affirming care for minors. The law went into effect Jan. 1, 2024.
