A federal judge has upheld Idaho’s new medical freedom law, ruling that daycares cannot require children to receive vaccines or other medical interventions as a condition of attendance.
Chief U.S. District Judge Amanda K. Brailsford last week dismissed a lawsuit brought by a Boise-area daycare and three parents who challenged the Idaho Medical Freedom Act. The act, signed into law in April, prohibits most medical mandates, including vaccines.
Brailsford rejected the plaintiffs’ claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague, violates parents’ rights or infringes on the daycare’s First Amendment rights.
Leslie Manookian, president of the Health Freedom Defense Fund and author of the law, said the ruling confirmed what she intended the law to do.
“Medical freedom, the right to make one’s own medical choices, is such a sacred and basic human right it astounds me that anyone could see otherwise,” Manookian told The Defender.
She said the law “protects an individual from public and private actors bullying, coercing and intruding into their personal and private medical choices or punishing them for their choices.”
Manookian also said she was “delighted that the federal court interpreted the law … as a safeguard against overreach” by government and private actors, including daycares.
‘A daycare does not’ make medical decisions
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, whose office defended the law, said the ruling confirms that parents — not businesses — are in charge of their children’s health.
“Parents make medical decisions for their children. A daycare does not,” Labrador said in a Sept. 22 statement. “The Legislature protected that choice in the Medical Freedom Act, and the court upheld it.”
Labrador added that daycares can continue telling parents what they believe about vaccines and health, but “they cannot turn a child away because of a parent’s medical decision.”
The attorneys representing Le Soleil Child Care LLC and the parents said they may appeal.
“Our clients are obviously disappointed by the district court’s ruling and the narrow manner in which it interpreted the right at issue,” attorney Andrea Carone said in a statement to the Idaho Statesman.
Carone argued that the law leaves daycares unable to take what the plaintiffs consider “reasonable steps” to protect children from diseases that vaccines can prevent. She called it “a clear public health issue” that the Idaho Legislature must address.
Parents don’t have ‘right to compel a third party to conform’ to their views
The Idaho Medical Freedom Act prohibits businesses, schools and government entities from requiring specified medical interventions as a condition of receiving services, employment or access to certain facilities.
The lawsuit centered in part on what the law means by a “medical intervention.” The law defines the term as a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug injection, medication or medical action used to diagnose, prevent or cure disease, or to alter a person’s health or biological function.
Le Soleil argued that definition was so broad that it could cover routine health and safety practices, including handwashing and sending sick children home. Brailsford rejected that interpretation.
