‘The last straw’: Family plans to leave the state after Gov. Little signs transgender bathroom bill into law

BOISE, Idaho — One Idaho family said they’ve hit a “breaking point,” and are planning to leave Idaho after Governor Brad Little signed House Bill 752, making it a crime for anyone to use bathrooms that don’t align with their sex assigned at birth. 

“Just when I think they’ve gone the lowest they can go, they grab a backhoe and go again,” Michael Devitt said in an interview he and his wife, Angie Devitt, did with KTVB.  

Michael Devitt has operated Focus Physical Therapy in downtown Boise for 28 years. Angie Devitt is a family physician and the current president of the Idaho Academy of Family Physicians. They raised two daughters, Isabelle, 23, and Eve, 20, in the Gem state. 

“It’s like one of the greatest places in the world to raise a family and to entertain that family with outdoors and with arts,” Michael Devitt said.

He said that feeling has eroded over years of watching the Idaho Legislature pass bill after bill affecting transgender Idahoans: from banning gender-affirming care for minors in 2023, to the bathroom criminalization law passed this session.

“I walk to work every day looking at the Capitol, and I used to think, you know, it’s the people’s house,” he said. “Now I look at it, and I say it’s where hateful people go to do hateful things to people they hate,” Michael Devitt said. 

Michael and Angie Devitt’s youngest daughter, Eve Devitt, is transgender. Starting July 1, House Bill 752, or Idaho’s bathroom law, makes it a crime for people to use bathrooms and changing rooms that don’t align with their sex at birth, government buildings and places of public accommodation across Idaho. A first offense is a misdemeanor and carries up to one year in jail. A second offense within five years is a felony carrying up to five years in prison. 

“Idaho is making it really clear as to who they want here, who they value here, and who they would rather see just go away,” Michael Devitt said. 

Michael Devitt said after Gov. Little signed the bathroom bill, it was “the last straw,” and their family is making plans to move out of state. 

Last fall, Eve Devitt brought a close friend from New York on a road trip across the state she loves…  through Sun Valley, up to Stanley, and north to the family cabin in McCall. She wanted her friend to see Idaho. Michael Devitt said she insisted on hitting every stop.

“This is my Idaho. I want her to see my Idaho. And now, you know, she can’t do that,” he said.

Eve Devitt, currently a college student in New York City, had one question for her parents when the bathroom bill passed. 

“She said, ‘How do I come home?'” Angie Devitt recalled.

Supporters of House Bill 752, including its Senate sponsor Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, said the law protects the privacy and safety of women and girls in private spaces. Toews told senators, “Individuals in these vulnerable settings have a reasonable expectation of privacy and security.â€Â 

House sponsor Rep. Cornel Rasor, R-Sagle, told House lawmakers, “It extends these biological sex protections, and it upholds multi-generational understanding of protecting women and girls.”

The Devitts see it differently.

“This bill is all about denying people’s humanity and their ability to exist, really,” Michael Devitt said. “And that’s our red line, and that’s not negotiable.”

“It’s inhumane,” Angie Devitt said. 

Angie Devitt, who has testified before the Legislature on multiple occasions as both a parent and a physician, said previous bills targeting transgender Idahoans were painful, but families could find workarounds. Someone could cross a state line for a medical appointment or navigate a system that had restricted their options. This law is different.

“People go to the bathroom every day,” Angie Devitt said. “That’s something that happens every day, and it’s a human right.”

A February 2025 research brief from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law studied transgender individuals’ social activity in other states with bathroom laws like the one soon to take effect in Idaho. It found 58% of transgender respondents reported avoiding going out in public due to a lack of access to safe bathrooms. 

The decision to leave the state, the Devitts said, is not really a choice at all.

“When the state says you don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else,” Michael Devitt said, “there are no other options. There just aren’t.”

Michael Devitt said they’re in an abusive relationship with the state. 

“We feel like all families with transgender kids – or transgender Idahoans – are in an abusive relationship with the state of Idaho,” he said. “And the tendency in an abusive relationship is to say it’ll stop. It’ll stop. It’ll get better. It never gets better… the relationship is broken, irreparable, and that’s where we are.”  

“To not be able to have our child feel safe coming home,” Angie Devitt said, “is not a place that we want to live.”

The state’s physician shortage makes the Devitts’ departure especially significant. Idaho already ranks among the lowest in the nation for doctors per capita. 

“He says in one statement, ‘we need doctors in Idaho,'” Angie Devitt said, referring to Gov. Little. “And I can tell you after the bathroom bills two weeks ago, we have at least — I know at least three families, one with two physicians, another with one physician, that are looking actively at leaving Idaho, just in the last two weeks.”

For Michael Devitt, closing the practice he spent nearly three decades building, moving is a decision he never imagined having to make.

“It kills me. It breaks my heart. This was not the plan,” he said. “I did not start the business hoping that I could do it and enjoy it until the state of Idaho drove my family from the state. That was never a consideration.”

Michael Devitt plans to close Focus Physical Therapy after the lease on the space is up in September. Angie Devitt, who has patients going back 30 years, plans to say goodbye to them as well. They are considering a move to Washington when the time is right, as they don’t want to leave Angie Devitt’s 90-year-old father in Idaho alone. 

“The Sawtooths are beautiful,” Michael Devitt said, “but we can fly to Boise and drive up and do something there, and then go to our home in a state that wants us and values us… We will not be here in three years, two years, four years, whatever it is.”

Gov. Little’s office, Rep. Rasor and Sen. Toews did not respond to requests for comment. House Bill 752 takes effect July 1.

Gov. Little also signed into law, House Bill 822earlier this month, that would require school staff, medical staff or any type of childcare provider to notify a parent within 72 hours if their child, who is a minor, has requested to socially or medically transition. This includes a request for a name change, pronoun change, or bathroom use. If professionals failed to notify a parent in that time frame, they could face lawsuits and up to a $100,000 fine for any entity that violates the bill. 

When asked about House Bill 822, the Devitts said Gov. Little’s signing of that bill after the bathroom bill only further solidified their decision to leave the state.