After the Idaho Legislature passed House Bill 668 during the 2024 legislative session, the ACLU of Idaho filed suit against the state on behalf of incarcerated individuals who would have been cut off from gender-affirming medical care as a result of the new law.
H.B. 668 prohibits any public funding from being used to provide puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, or gender-affirming surgery or providing gender-affirming medical care in any public building, including state prisons.
We partnered with attorneys at the national ACLU to file this lawsuit on June 28, 2024, arguing that by denying gender-affirming medical care to prisoners who have no option to leave the state or shop around for different health care to cover their medical needs, the state is violating their Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment.
Originally filed using the pseudonyms Jane Poe and Jane Doe, the named plaintiffs in this case ultimately decided to use their real names Katie Heredia (legal last name Robinson) and Rose Mills.
On September 3, 2024, the judge granted the plaintiffs both class action certification and a preliminary injunction. The class action certification means that the named plaintiffs are allowed to represent a class of all prisoners who have been, or will be diagnosed with gender dysphoria, so rulings would apply to the entire class rather than just the two individuals named in the lawsuit. The preliminary injunction, therefore, prevents H.B. 668 from being enforced to deny doctor-prescribed hormone therapy for any incarcerated person in Idaho while litigation continues.
