A former Boise High School student can seek damages against the Boise School District after encountering a transgender classmate in the girls’ bathroom twice last year, an Ada County judge ruled Friday.
The ruling by District Judge Lynn Norton allows Jane Doe’s lawsuit against the district to move forward. But it doesn’t settle the case, which is scheduled for a trial next year.
Doe, a pseudonym, is seeking $10,000 in civil fines along with additional monetary damages for the “psychological and emotional harm” she endured while sharing a bathroom with a transgender student in January and February of last year.
Doe’s attorneys at the Idaho Family Policy Center argued that the Boise School District should have been abiding by Senate Bill 1100 at the time of the bathroom encounters.
The bill requires that public school students use bathrooms aligned with their birth sex. It also includes a “private cause of action,” which gives students the right to bring a civil action against a public school that permits students to “use facilities of the opposite sex.”
Attorneys for the school district argued that the law was paused at the time and asked the court to dismiss Doe’s complaint.
In a separate case that wrapped up this year, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had issued a stay on SB 1100, pausing enforcement of the law while the court considered a request for a preliminary injunction. The Ninth Circuit ultimately declined to issue an injunction. But the stay was in effect when Doe encountered a transgender student in the girls’ bathroom.
On Friday, Norton denied the Boise School District’s motion to dismiss Doe’s complaint. While the federal stay barred “enforcement” of SB 1100, it didn’t preclude the private cause of action, Norton wrote.
The language of the stay was “not so broad as to prevent a cause of action under (SB 1100) from accruing,” Norton wrote. “So, while (Doe) was precluded from filing a claim while the stay was in effect, Doe is not precluded from filing the claim after the preliminary injunction was denied.”
The Idaho Family Policy Center and Boise School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
During oral arguments last month, the district’s attorney argued that allowing a private cause of action to accrue while a law is paused essentially forces a school district to “predict” whether the law will be upheld. “You’re really placing a school district between a rock and a hard place,” said Mitchell Kolberg of Anderson, Julian and Hull.
The case is now headed to a jury trial, which is scheduled for June 7, 2027. Pretrial conferences are scheduled for April.
Idaho Education News previously reported that an allegation at the center of Doe’s complaint is strongly contested. Doe claimed that she heard the transgender student, Daisy Davis — also a pseudonym — masturbating in the girls’ bathroom on Feb. 5.
Davis denied the “humiliating” accusation. She told a federal court last year that what Doe might have heard and misinterpreted was self-stimulating behavior — repetitive vocalizations and movements that are common among people with autism.
