Bathroom bills threaten the privacy of cisgender women like me, too | Opinion

The Idaho Legislature, in its apparent zeal to punish transgender people for — existing, I guess — has introduced two bills designed to prevent transgender people from using public restrooms (HB 607 and HB 752). The bills have different enforcement mechanisms, but both bills would invade the privacy not just of trans women but of cisgender women.

I’m a cisgender woman. I’ve shared public restrooms with transgender women on more than one occasion. It’s never been a problem. But I’ve been misgendered more than once, so the enforcement mechanisms of these bills make me uneasy. What if someone challenges my right to pee?

Rep. Anne Henderson Haws, D-Boise, questioned Blaine Conzatti, president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, about this very problem when HB 607 was debated in committee earlier this session.

Haws: “If I’m a person who uses a restroom, and I think somebody is an opposite sex in that restroom, and I need to prove that to make my case, do I take their picture in the restroom?”

Conzatti: “Possibly? I mean there’s, you know, witnesses, there’s video cameras. You know, again, the plaintiff would bear the burden of proving by a preponderance of the evidence that, you know, what they’re alleging took place took place and that the duty was indeed breached.”

Haws: “So in that instance … it says that every place of public accommodation, meaning all those businesses, have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure that the privacy and safety of an individual is protected from members of the other sex in every restroom — am I protected in a restroom from someone taking my picture, and then, is that exposing the business to liability from just me, ordinary me using the restroom and having somebody take my picture?”

Conzatti: “No. No, the building has no duty of care to prevent someone from taking your picture. That’s not a legal duty that they have under the law.”

Haws: “What I’m getting at here is that there’s a real issue of proof, to prove a case like this, and I believe the way that this would operate would expose a business to double liability where I have a reasonable expectation of privacy and if somebody is taking pictures of me in a bathroom, that’s a problem, if that’s their only way to prove it, ‘cause what are they going to do, like citizen’s arrest? Give me, you know, ‘Give me your ID, give me your fingernail! I gotta prove that you’re a woman!’”

This isn’t theoretical. Laws like these do impact not just transwomen, but cisgender women.

Boise State student Rachel Anne Pierce, a cisgender woman with short hair, testified that she had already been affected by a similar bill passed last year covering university bathrooms.

“I have been stopped several times trying to go to the bathroom at school, sometimes in polite ways and sometimes in rather aggressive ways,” she said. “I’ve been harassed and made uncomfortable for just trying to pee in between my classes or when I’m studying in the library. ... My dignity has been stripped from me in this manner, and I’ve been publicly humiliated multiple times. My privacy has been violated every time that I’m interrogated about my sex while trying to use the bathroom. If the intention of these bills is to make people, especially women, safer, that’s not what it’s accomplished in the test run in schools and state buildings.”

The potential for abusing the privacy and safety of women and girls under either of these bills is frightening. The Idaho Legislature should stop its assault on the rights of transgender people. These efforts only serve to trample on everyone’s rights in the process.

Lora Volkert is a lifelong resident of the Treasure Valley, former journalist and software developer.

This story was originally published March 9, 2026 at 4:00 AM.