As Idaho’s trans bathroom lawsuit is dismissed, the teenage suicide at its heart gets ignored

By Scar Ruiten

As a trans Idahoan, I find myself overwhelmed politically. It seems like every day there is more bad news, more laws restricting my life, more legal jargon to decipher, more, more, more.

When I heard that the lawsuit against the K-12 trans bathroom ban was dismissed, I was once again overwhelmed by the headlines. 

KMVT 11 reads “Plaintiffs drop lawsuit over Idaho school bathroom privacy law”. KTVB 7 reads “AG Labrador claims victory in Idaho school bathroom lawsuit”. It goes on and on. Idaho Education News reads “School bathroom law fully in effect, as one legal battle comes to a close”.

But when I read past the headlines, it was glaringly obvious that they were hiding an essential part of the story: This lawsuit was dropped because the trans high schooler bringing it to court took her own life.

The student, referred to in court filings as Jane Doe, was a member of Boise High School’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance. She was the sole remaining plaintiff in the case against the law barring her from school bathrooms, and she died at 16.

Jane Doe wasn’t originally the sole plaintiff in the lawsuit. The other plaintiff graduated high school this spring, so they no longer have standing to sue. Therefore, the death of Jane Doe meant there was no plaintiff with the standing to keep the lawsuit going.

We don’t have to speculate on what caused this suicide. Jane Doe’s mother made the answer clear in court.

“While I may never have certainty about all the things that ultimately led to Jane’s death, I know that one stressor in her life was her struggle to fit in socially as a transgender girl. This stress of feeling alienated in her life was exacerbated by Jane’s exclusion from the girls’ restroom at school. The option of a single-user restroom did not resolve her distress. Rather, it caused her to feel ostracized from others — ‘like I’m being treated as this other kind of thing’ — as she described in her supplemental declaration.”

Her death doesn’t exist in a bubble. It is directly linked to the law she hoped the courts would dismiss, to all the other anti-trans bills which the legislature has passed, and to the legislators who have done everything in their power to ostracize trans people like her. Her mother’s statement makes it clear: Jane being trans was not what killed her, it was legislature’s actions that made her existence very stressful.

After reading her mom’s statement, one question immediately arises: Why are local outlets ignoring Jane Doe’s suicide when it’s the very reason that her case was dismissed?

Of the articles previously mentioned, only the latter mentions the death, and only briefly. It quickly moves on to the subject which all these articles are truly interested in: the response of Attorney General Raúl Labrador, the very man whose government Jane Doe was suing.

His response could only be described as a victory lap. “From the district court to the Ninth Circuit, we defended Idaho’s right to protect students’ privacy in bathrooms and locker rooms,” Labrador said in a press release. “Idaho families can be confident that this law is fully in effect and will remain so.”

Labrador never mentions the student’s suicide. When he was asked about it later that day, he said that it was “a personal tragedy and our hearts go out to the family.” However, he declined to address the connection between her death and the lawsuit, saying “We don’t comment on the private circumstances of individuals involved in litigation.”

This is a personal tragedy, but one that was caused in no small part by the law he’s celebrating. Is it not therefore wrong to so brazenly claim the dismissal as a win for Idaho? The case was never heard in court, and the Idaho government’s position was never defended, because the 16-year-old bringing the lawsuit died by suicide. What is there to celebrate?

Nothing has been done to “protect student’s privacy”, because trans people existing in spaces that align with their gender was never a threat to anyone’s privacy. Regardless of what Labrador wants you to think, there has never been a recorded instance of a trans person encroaching on another student’s privacy in a gendered facility in Idaho. This so-called problem simply doesn’t exist. 

From the so-called “Secretive Pediatric Transitions” act requiring trans youth to be reported to their parents, to the felony bathroom ban passed at the very moment a rally for Transgender Day of Visibility was being held on the Capitol steps, this legislative season was a nightmare. 

This has been the norm for years. The Idaho legislature keeps finding new ways to raise the pressure on trans people. Idaho was an early adopter of both trans sports bans and gender affirming care bans for youth. Each new bill is a reminder that our government will do everything in its power to oppress us. 

I think I know why Labrador is celebrating. This is a victory for him. The system is working exactly as designed.

Republican politicians are more than aware that they’re creating a system to alienate trans people. Yet, they’d rather listen to the baseless feelings of the opposing side. In Idaho, fiction takes precedent over fact. Their ‘victories’  are built on the social murder of transgender people. The state knows this. Its cruelty is the point. Our suffering is the goal.

The media is complicit in this. They choose to focus on Labrador’s response rather than the death which prompted his legal victory. They choose to focus on right-wing fears rather than the effects this law will have on trans Idahoans. They platform arguments framing trans people as boogeymen, and don’t let the actual people they are caricaturing speak. They ignore Jane Doe’s death because, like the government of Idaho, they don’t care about it. 

Their choices come at the expense of real people’s lives.

To the Idaho outlets covering the dismissal of the lawsuit without acknowledging the tragedy that caused it, I ask: How many trans people have to die before you put us in the headlines?