An anti-abortion lobbying group last week sued Boise State University, alleging officials there withheld public records related to an academic article that stated obstetrician-gynecologists fled Idaho after the state’s abortion ban took effect.
The Idaho Family Policy Center (IFPC) — a Christian lobbying group that authored one of two state laws that prohibit abortion under most circumstances — filed the lawsuit after Boise State produced only a two-page document in response to its December records request.
The request sought documents, data and correspondence related to a 2025 article that found 35% of OB-GYNs left Idaho between 2022 and 2024 — after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering Idaho’s abortion ban. Boise State provided institutional review for the article. It was co-authored by a doctor associated with Boise State’s School of Health Sciences.
IFPC’s complaint alleges that the scope of the research project “must have produced a paper trail longer than two pages.” And if not, a $257.02 bill that IFPC received from Boise State to obtain the records was unwarranted. The university billed IFPC for three-and-a-half hours of review by a paralegal and attorney, although nothing was redacted from the document it produced.
The lawsuit also alleges that Boise State ignored the 10-day legal deadline to fulfill records requests, taking well over a month to produce the two-page document. IFPC filed its request on Dec. 10, 2025, and Boise State produced the document on Jan. 27, 2026.
IFPC president Blaine Conzatti said in a news release Monday that his group sought the data underlying the article because the number of OB-GYNs leaving the state is “contradicted by other sources.” Now, Boise State is “unlawfully refusing to comply with our request,” he said.
“BSU has played fast and loose with the requirements of Idaho’s public records law for a long time,” Conzatti said. “Their evasion needs to end — and we’re going to hold them accountable.”
The news release cited reporting from BoiseDev and Idaho Education News on Boise State’s previous handling of public records. The reporting showed that university officials have renamed files to shield them from records requests and broke legal deadlines to fulfill requests.
Stephany Galbreaith, director of media relations at Boise State, declined to comment on the lawsuit Monday. “We do not comment on pending litigation,” Galbreaith said by email.
IFPC filed its lawsuit with the Ada County District Court. The complaint asks the court to order Boise State to “produce the records requested, or to show cause why it has not done so,” and to award $257.02 in damages or “an amount to be determined at trial.” It also asks the court to award IFPC attorney fees.
The two-page document that Boise State did hand over to IFPC is a data set showing the number of OB-GYNs in Idaho’s 44 counties from 2022-24. The document shows that the number of doctors declined from 268 to 174, a 35% reduction.
To find this number, researchers relied on “publicly available credentialing files and sources, licensing boards, physician websites, Idaho’s American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists registry, Idaho Medical Association database, local knowledge of the practices, and direct physician confirmation,” according to the article published last year.
According to Conzatti, the claim of a 35% decline is “contradicted” by data from the Idaho Board of Medicine, which licenses physicians. The number of “actively licensed physicians declaring OB/GYN as their specialty” increased nearly 20% between 2022 and 2024, according to an article that Conzatti published Sunday.
“This data is admittedly imperfect,” Conzatti wrote. “Not all physicians actively practice in the state where they’re licensed. Furthermore, the Idaho Board of Medicine allows physicians to self-report their specialty — and they’re not even required to declare any specialty at all.”
