ACLU of Idaho director warns of chipping away at civil liberties | Opinion

It seems like right around this time every year in Idaho, people say, “This is the worst legislative session ever.”

I myself wrote a pair of columns in 2021, dubbing that year “the worst session ever,” citing efforts to usurp power from the governor, from the attorney general, from cities and states, local school boards and districts, even from voters.

“I felt like a few years ago was the worst,” Leo Morales, executive director of ACLU of Idaho, told me in a video interview. “And then last year, I thought, ‘Oh no, this is the worst.’ And this year, I’m saying this is the worst, and so I’ve got to stop saying that because I’m concerned that next year is going to be horrible as well.”

But arguing back in 2021 about whether to withdraw from Powerball because Australia has gun control seems so quaint compared with the more serious attacks on individual civil liberties brought by legislators this year.

“For us on the civil liberties front, we’re very concerned with the direction in which this legislature is leading the state of Idaho,” Morales said. “I would say over the last three to four years, it’s just gotten progressively worse and worse. I’m not quite sure where Idahoans are on this, but it should be very, very concerning for the direction of where the state is going.”

So what makes this year so bad?

“What makes this year different from others is that there’s a concerted effort — and it’s a national effort with a significant amount of resources — that have come from out of state to Idaho in a very organized way that are moving bills here that will absolutely change the Idaho that we know,” Morales said. “There are bills that are really based in right-wing Christian nationalism, Christian fundamentalism and supremacy.”

Blaine Conzatti, of the Idaho Family Policy Center, is a good example. His group is behind a number of anti-transgender bills, including one that would prohibit and criminalize parents and their children making decisions about gender-affirming care.

Conzatti told the Idaho Statesman’s Bryan Clark in an interview that he considers himself a Christian nationalist.

The Idaho Family Policy Center has ties to the national organization Family Policy Alliance, which has ties to Focus on the Family, Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council, according to previous reporting by Idaho Capital Sun.

Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, last week gave up any pretenses of independent thinking when she presented a so-called “silent prayer” bill that would allow teachers to pray in school.

“I had been working with First Liberty Institute … and asked them, is this something that maybe we should be doing at the states,” Ehardt said. “And they had written this legislation for the states, and other states are also bringing it.”

First Liberty Institute is a conservative Christian nonprofit based in Texas that purports to fight for freedom of religion.

An article in Mother Jones over the weekend showed communications in 2020 among the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Liberty Counsel and Idaho Rep. Julianne Young, R-Blackfoot, about her bill prohibiting transgender Idahoans from changing the gender marker on their birth certificates, another example of national organizations imposing their moral dogma on Idahoans by using complicit and easily duped Idaho legislators.

“There are multiple bills that are moving in the direction of starting to erode historically enjoyed civil liberties, so that now there’s a lot more government intervention in telling Idahoans how to live their lives,” Morales said. “At the core of what’s different (this year) is that it’s part of a national, coordinated movement that has come to Idaho very well-resourced and is making a significant amount of work for us here in the state.”

Specifically, the ACLU of Idaho is looking at coordinated efforts to erode voting rights, criminalize interstate travel for an abortion as human trafficking and a call for limits on lower federal courts to consider abortion cases in Idaho.

Perhaps most egregious are the attacks on the civil liberties of the LGBTQ community. In addition to prohibiting and criminalizing parents and their doctors for providing gender-affirming care for their children, one bill dictates which bathrooms trans kids can use in school. Another attempts to outlaw drag shows, a bill that is so vaguely worded and broad that it could have a major chilling effect on other forms of free expression.

Amy Dundon, of the ACLU of Idaho, stressed that while some of these issues are coming from so-called right-wing groups, the debate should not be seen as simply left versus right.

“I would remind folks that it’s OK to have conservative values,” Dundon said in a video interview. “But it’s crucial that you respect someone who has a more progressive view or a less progressive view. Respecting basic human rights and human dignity is really the key.”

Someone who is conservative, Republican and Christian, who thinks homosexuality is a sin and doubts the experiences of transgender people should still be concerned about the erosion of someone else’s basic human rights.

“We have the freedom to exercise our religious or moral beliefs,” Dundon said. “We have those rights equally, as every other Idahoan does, and I think that that piece is missing.”

And the fact that outside forces are able to exert their policies on Idahoans by using state legislators to enshrine moral beliefs in state law should trouble everyone.

“My concern is when we are putting in code how someone should live their lives, when we put in code what type of books they have access to or not, that almost becomes social engineering for our society,” Morales said. “That’s part of the dangerous nature of what’s moving here, is that a certain perspective is writing things in code that essentially then is guiding how every Idahoan should live, which is contrary to our view of limited government.”

Yes, we can say this is the worst session ever once again, but the worse it gets, the more dire it seems to become.