At the beginning of the fall semester at Boise State University in 2022, rumors swirled. Taylor Wilson could sense that something had shifted, but it was only when the news about the law broke that she knew exactly what was happening.

A month into the semester, students were getting into the swing of their classes. Behind the scenes, it was a different story. At universities across Idaho, university attorneys sent memos advising faculty to be careful about how they spoke about abortion in the classroom. The University of Idaho’s memo leaked to the press, setting off a media frenzy.

The memos were in reaction to Idaho’s 2021 No Public Funds for Abortion Act, which prohibits the use of public funds to “promote” or “counsel in favor of abortion.” Public universities like Boise State use public funds for professor salaries. 

“Honestly, a lot of it is still confusing to me.”

Wilson, who graduated from Boise State in 2023 with a degree in political science, said that students at Boise State were kept in the dark about how the No Public Funds Act would affect their education. 

“Honestly, a lot of it is still confusing to me,” Wilson said. 

The penalty for breaking the law is steep— up to 14 years in prison— and it was unclear to what extent it affected academic speech, if at all, said Andrew Beck, a lawyer with the ACLU. Either way, professors didn’t want to take the risk. 

Two Idaho teachers’ unions and six professors across Idaho state universities along with the ACLU are suing the state for violating the First Amendment and being unconstitutionally vague.

Post Roe v. Wade, Idaho lawmakers are not only challenging access to abortion, but in the case of No Public Funds, attempting to legislate the public discourse surrounding the procedure. Abortion was largely restricted in Idaho after August 2022, changing the landscape of reproductive rights within the state. 

The law initially didn’t attract attention from universities, said Martin Orr, a sociology professor at Boise State University and the president of the Idaho Federation of Teachers. That changed after the university attorneys’ memo. 

“It really wasn’t clear the extent to which this affected faculty, what we say in the classroom, or the way we conduct research or how we report findings,” Orr said. He joined the suit as the president of the teachers’ federation. 

Beck, who is currently litigating the case, said that professors fear normal lessons that touch on abortion could be “construed as promoting or counseling in favor of abortion,” he said. 

According to the lawsuit, professors have changed their courses to avoid speaking about abortion in any capacity. Medical ethics classes have barred any discussion of the topic. Vox articles about feminism have been purged from mass media classes. Roe v Wade goes unmentioned. 

“The anti-abortion movements has been sort of a central feature of American politics for decades. How do you not talk about that?” Orr said.

“They’re lying.”

To Blaine Conzatti, the lawsuit is nothing more than “political theater,” he said. Conzatti, who co-authored No Public Funds, is also the president of the Idaho Family Policy Center, a “public policy think tank that works to advance the lordship of Jesus Christ in the public square,” according to Conzatti. 

No Public Funds isn’t the first law Conzatti has championed, nor is it his first tangle with the ACLU. He’s helped pass four Idaho laws since 2020. One law he shored up support for, banning transgender women from competing on womens’ student sports teams, also faces an ACLU lawsuit. 

Conzatti dismisses the ACLU’s argument that No Public Funds is a free speech issue. He said that neutral discussion of abortion is allowed under No Public Funds, and professors are “lying” when they say all in-classroom speech about abortion has been affected.

In the University of Idaho’s leaked memo, the university’s general counsel said that professors can have classroom discussions on abortion depending on if it’s relevant to the class subject and “instructor neutrality.” 

Conzatti agreed with the universities’ legal counsel’s interpretation of the law.

“Students at colleges and universities deserve the best education they can get, and these professors are preventing them from receiving that education without any legal justification whatsoever,” Conzatti said.

“In the same way that a professor shouldn’t be advocating murder, a professor shouldn’t be advocating theft, etcetera, while within the scope of their employment, these professors shouldn’t be advocating for an activity that’s recognized as a crime,” Conzatti said. 

An amendment explicitly excluding academic speech from No Public Funds died. Conzatti doesn’t regret its exclusion because it was “entirely unnecessary,” he said. “The text of the law is really clear.” 

A culture of fear and silence

Beck said that No Public Funds created “mass confusion and panic” on how it related to academia, or if it even related to academia at all. But with professors choosing to play it safe, the effect has been felt all the same. 

The lack of clarity on the law created a culture of fear and silence on campus. Wilson said she never knew exactly what was allowed to be said in class. If a discussion about abortion naturally arose in one of her classes, the professor would steer the conversation in a different direction. “They were more wary,” she said. 

Even though Boise State administration communicated to faculty to exercise caution when talking about abortion, Wilson said that professors never brought up the law or its implications in class. Outside of political circles on campus, most students probably didn’t know what the law was, according to some Boise State students. Wilson said she later spoke to a professor privately who expressed their disappointment at the law but felt that their hands were tied. 

Wilson got the sentiment that law wasn’t popular, even among conservative students. She said she spoke to one pro-life student who thought the law was against the First Amendment.

“Even though he doesn’t personally agree with abortion, that’s a whole other level, stopping people from talking about it,” Wilson said. 

Maddy Horak, a senior studying political science at Boise State, said discussion about abortion is almost entirely driven by students, and professors will rarely bring up abortion of their own volition. 

“You could just feel the tension in the air where it’s like, who’s gonna say what about it?”

Will Farkas, a junior studying communications and minoring in political science, noticed the same. Students can still choose to write essays about abortion or bring it up in class, he said, but it’s not prompted or encouraged by professors.

“You could just feel the tension in the air where it’s like, who’s gonna say what about it?” Horak said.

Last fall, Horak took a class about women’s legal rights where abortion was explicitly discussed in the context of whether abortion was covered by medical insurance and a protected reason to take off of work. Horak said the discussion was “technical and directly applicable” to the class, and didn’t veer into debate.

“I just noticed the conversation about it is just less as a whole. Where it seems like it would come up, it doesn’t. Where it seems like there would be extended conversation on the topic, there isn’t,” Horak said.

The Young Democrats’ “vigilante system”

The effects were also felt beyond the classroom. From fall 2022 to spring 2023, Wilson was the president of Boise State’s chapter of Young Democrats. After No Public Funds was passed, certain aspects of the club were forced to go underground. They couldn’t partner with abortion advocacy groups like Idaho Abortion Rights or distribute the emergency contraceptive pill Plan B. 

The club receives limited money from the university, Wilson and current Young Democrats president Farkas said, which means they can fall under No Public Funds’ jurisdiction. Accepting university funds also means that they can have access to university resources, like participating in club fairs and being on the events calendar, which is essential for member recruitment. Beyond the financial aspect, Farkas said he was more concerned about Boise State’s politically diverse culture, and is careful about not alienating the university’s administration or student body so the club can keep growing. 

“We know the school wouldn’t be happy with tons of abortion activism or rhetoric from a school club,” Farkas said. 

Wilson said Idaho’s abortion ban, which coincided with No Public Funds in August 2022, sparked more of a focus on abortion within the Young Democrats than in past years. Beyond reproductive access, the club also registers people to vote, participates in advocacy work and mobilizes people for protests.

Post No Public Funds, the Young Democrats still helped people get abortions and distributed Plan B, but did so on an individual basis rather than as a club. Instead, an appointed safe person talked amongst club members to distribute Plan B or help people cross state lines to get abortions.

“The consequences of our club ceasing to exist, were, in my mind, potentially greater than playing their game,” Wilson said. 

Part of the problem was that the game wasn’t clear. 

Wilson stayed in communication with university staff during her time as president, who were “trying to help me play it safe,” she said, so the club didn’t get shut down.

“The consequences of our club ceasing to exist, were, in my mind, potentially greater than playing their game.”

“The most frustrating part is we’re getting half-assed guidance, because they don’t know what the rules are either. Nobody knows what exactly the rules are, but the university doesn’t want to lose funding and the clubs don’t want to lose funding,” Wilson said.

In No Public Funds’ second year, the Young Democrats have become less interested in appeasing the university. Farkas said that he never received any guidance from the university about what the club could and couldn’t do, but unlike Wilson, he never asked them to clarify. 

While the club still is cautious about publicly discussing abortion, they’ve created a “vigilante system” to distribute Plan B, Horak said. After the No Public Funds Law, Plan B was removed from the student health center. Conzatti said removing emergency contraception from publicly funded health clinics, like student health centers, was the driving force behind the law. Now, the Young Democrats receive Plan B from Idaho Abortion Rights. People can anonymously text a Google Voice number and club members will deliver them the pill. 

The club is looking to expand their Plan B network by implementing safe people in sororities and fraternities. 

“We’re planting these resources in places and letting them find people,” Horak said.

An uncertain future

As the second academic year of the No Public Funds law comes to an end, the fight in court against the law is just beginning. A ruling in favor of the ACLU would simply exclude academic speech from the law, not throw it out entirely. 

The path forward for the lawsuit isn’t necessarily clear. Before filing the lawsuit, the ACLU asked Idaho prosecutors multiple times if professors could be prosecuted under No Public Funds and received no response, Beck said. Only after the suit was filed did the Idaho Attorney General, Raúl Labrador, write in a legal opinion that the ACLU’s lawsuit was unnecessary because the law did not cover academic speech. Nobody has been prosecuted for violating the law. 

That opinion further complicates the case, Beck said, because a simple opinion from the attorney general doesn’t create law. A future attorney general could choose to enforce it. Now the courts can throw out the case because “there’s no longer any real fight,” Beck said, and leave how the No Public Funds for Abortion Act relates to freedom of speech undefined forever.

“I think [Labrador] really did it in order to get out from under this lawsuit. So you can call that politics or you can call that sort of legal maneuvering,” Beck said.

To Democratic students at Boise State, the fight over No Public Funds is business as usual. 

“A very common theme with Idaho laws is that they just push stuff through and no one knows what the hell is happening,” Farkas said. “They know it’s really vague.”

To Wilson, who navigated the first year of No Public Funds, the law was a “stressor,” she said, but not unusual in Idaho.

“It’s really hard to live here,” she said. 

Wilson started her own company managing campaigns to try and flip some Idaho state seats blue. She said that “despite attempts at censorship,” she’s hopeful because there’s thousands of people in Idaho fighting for reproductive rights.

“What else can we do?”