B. Lynn Winmill

Barry Lynn Winmill (born March 18, 1952) is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the District of Idaho.

Early life and education Born and raised in Blackfoot, Idaho, Winmill grew up on a dairy farm. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Idaho State University (ISU) in Pocatello in 1974, where he was student body president.

Federal judicial service On May 24, 1995, Winmill was nominated by President Bill Clinton to a seat on the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, vacated by Judge Harold Lyman Ryan, who assumed senior status in early 1993. (Clinton's original nominee for the vacancy was lawyer John Tait of Lewiston.) That nomination was one of many that year blocked for political reasons. The state's Republican U.S. Senators, Larry Craig and Dirk Kempthorne, opposed Tait's nomination.

Confirmed by the Senate by voice vote on August 11, 1995, Winmill received his commission three days later. and assumed senior status on August 16, 2021. The employee suffered severe brain damage, and Elias was convicted of "knowingly endangering the safety and health of his employees, illegally disposing of hazardous cyanide waste and making a false statement to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration."

In Western Watersheds Project v. Fish and Wildlife Service (2007), Winmill ordered the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to reconsider its decision not to list the sage-grouse as an endangered or threatened species under the Endangered Species Act. In an opinion highly critical of FWS officials, Winmill singled out deputy assistant secretary Julie A. MacDonald for criticism, and held that the agency had impermissibly disregarded scientific evidence in making its decision to deny protection to the sage-grouse.

In Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Otter (2015), Winmill struck down the "ag gag" law passed by the Idaho Legislature in 2012, ruling that the statute—which, among other things, banned the audio or visual recording of agricultural operations—violated the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In January 2018, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit upheld most of the ruling.

In Edmo v. Idaho Department of Correction (2018), Winmill ruled in favor of a transgender inmate diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who challenged the state's refusal to provide gender confirmation surgery. Winmill ruled that the state's disregard of the "generally accepted medical standards for the treatment of gender dysphoria" constituted deliberate indifference to the inmate's medical needs, in violation of the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

On August 13, 2026, in Seyb v. Members of the Idaho Board of Medicine, et al (2024), Winfill ruled in favor of the plaintiff, finding that the state's de facto abortion ban, legislated via Idaho's Defense of Life and the Fetal Heartbeat Acts, violates due process and equal protection clauses under the 14th Amendmen t.

Personal life Winmill is married; he and his wife Judy have four children and fourteen grandchildren.

He has served as a member of the board of the Idaho Humanities Council; as a member of the Board of Visitors of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School; and as a co-founder of the Idaho Legal History Society, which sponsored the performance of an original play marking the hundredth anniversary of the high-profile trial of Big Bill Haywood.