Idaho cities and counties that fly unapproved flags could face pricey fines under a bill that cleared the House Thursday.
House Bill 561 would levy a $2,000 fine for each day municipalities violate the law.
Legislators passed its first anti-flag law last year, but overlooked including a way to enforce it.
Boise Mayor Lauren McLean has continued flying an LGBTQ Pride Flag at city hall, with city council members adopting it as an official flag last May.
“That’s lawless, insubordinate and intolerable,” said Rep. Ted Hill (R-Eagle), who sponsored both this year’s and last year’s flag bills.
The bill only allows municipalities to fly the American flag, official military flags, state flags and the Basque flag.
Only city flags adopted before 2023 would be acceptable and cities could never change their flag going forward.
Hill says activists shouldn’t be in charge of the public sphere, which he called quote “a subspecies of Marxism.”
“Call it what you might, but it’s this incremental attack on all our cultural issues and all these things that divide us and having this is divisive and we should have something that’s uniting. And all these discussions are not helpful,” he said.
House Democratic Leader Ilana Rubel (D-Boise) said supporters are specifically targeting Boise with the bill, but applying it to all municipalities to avoid violating the Constitution.
“The Constitution is not an administrative hurdle that we should be trying to pull shenanigans to try to get around. It’s there for a reason and I think we got to call a spade a spade. That’s what this is,” Rubel said.
The measure passed largely along party lines and now goes to the Senate.
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