Executions by firing squad, restricting transgender students’ bathroom use: Idaho Gov signs multiple bills

Republican governor of the US state of Idaho, Brad Little, signed a number of bills this week, among them being firing squad executions and one preventing transgender students from using public school bathrooms that do not correspond to their gender at birth.

Little signed House Bill 186, which permits firing squad to carry out executions in Idaho in the event state is unable to get lethal injections by pharmaceutical companies. Many US states have had trouble finding the chemicals needed for lethal injection, which has forced them to halt executions.

Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the practice of executing inmates who have been convicted of certain crimes. The method of execution varies by country and jurisdiction. They commonly includes lethal injection, electrocution, gas chamber, hanging, or firing squad.

Many US States have long relied on medicines like potassium chloride, pancuronium bromide, and sodium thiopental that have been criticised for their potential to inflict agonising pain. This comes as many pharmaceutical companies have banned lethal injections. It has raised fears of alternative execution methods in the United States.

“The families of the victims deserve justice for their loved ones and the death penalty is a way to bring them peace,” Little said in a transmittal letter.

Once taken effect, Idaho will become the fifth US state carrying out executions by firing squad. The other four states, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, are Utah, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and South Carolina.

Many Human rights groups have supported these companies but now the states are coming up with alternatives, executions by firing squads being one of them. This along with Senate Bill 1100 on restricting trangenders use of restrooms, both will take effect on 1 July.

“Requiring students to share restrooms and changing facilities with members of the opposite biological sex generates potential embarrassment, shame, and psychological injury to students,” the bill states.

According to the bill, students may sue their schools if they permitted individuals of the opposite sex to use facilities that were designated for only one sex.In addition to receiving monetary damages from schools for psychological or physical harm, students who are successful in their private lawsuits will receive $5,000 from the public school systems for each occasion they saw "a person of the opposite sex" in those gendered facilities.

Sen. Rick Just, a Democrat from the state, told CNN on Saturday that he had voted against the measure mostly because it permits anyone to bring private lawsuits against school systems.

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