Local lawmaker brings draft bill to address issues with 2024 parental consent law

IDAHO FALLS (Idaho Capital Sun) — A long-awaited bill to revise Idaho’s 2024 parental consent law to address barriers to young people accessing emergency but non-life threatening care, medical examinations after reported abuse, and support through the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline was introduced Monday.

Idaho Falls Republican Rep. Barbara Ehardt was a sponsor of the 2024 bill to create the parental consent law, Senate Bill 1329, which prohibited providing medical care to minors under 18 with narrow exceptions to prevent their death or “irreparable physical injury.” 

Ehardt said the bill will add clarifying language and will repeal older laws that were in direct conflict with the 2024 law. 

“What you have before you is what we’ve long been waiting for, not just since last year, but this entire year,” Ehardt told the House Ways and Means Committee on Monday. 

The committee unanimously voted to introduce the bill, which clears the way for it to return for a public hearing. 

How does the bill change the parental consent law? 

The bill’s changes would:

• Clarify that the law should not be interpreted to prohibit providing non-emergency first aid to a child that appears sick or injured, such as dressing a minor wound or applying a topical ointment. 
• Allow treatment to address “a serious bodily harm” or prevent “serious physical illness or injury.”
• Add new requirements for receiving blanket consent for care from parents. 
• Allow treatment and examinations related to an allegation of a crime against the child, or to collect evidence of the alleged crime when the collection is time-sensitive, such as a sexual assault case. 
• Allow the 988 Crisis and Suicide Hotline to provide immediate services, and if the child is experiencing suicidal ideation, allow the hotline to do a follow-up call. 
• Allow diagnosis of pregnancy, prenatal care, and peripartum care, none of which may include abortion care. 

SB 1329 also created requirements that parents be granted access to their child’s medical records, unless it was prohibited by a court order or the parent was subject to an investigation. The new bill added that records would not have to be turned over if the record relates to physical abuse, abandonment, or neglect by the parent seeking the record. 

When Senate Bill 1329 first went into effect, there were questions about how it would conflict with the existing laws that had previously allowed teenagers to consent to some care, the Idaho Press reported. When SB 1329 went into effect, it likely invalidated those laws.

The bill introduced Monday repeals the laws that had allowed for certain cases in which teenagers could consent to their own medical care, such as for contraception, to treat sexually transmitted and other communicable diseases, and for voluntary inpatient mental health treatment.

What is the bill trying to fix? 

Since the bill went into effect July 1, 2024, there have been a number of consequences that bill sponsors say were unintended. 

In August, the Idaho Capital Sun reported that the 988 Suicide and Crisis Hotline director said the bill limited operators’ ability to serve some young people under 18 who called, and they couldn’t conduct follow-ups with those kids. In February, a Meridian teenager who had his call to 988 end because he didn’t have parental consent told the Sun he was advocating for lawmakers to amend the law. 

Soon after the law went into effect, a health care provider with Idaho State Police raised alarms that it would inhibit sexual assault, or rape kit, exams on minor children when the perpetrator is a parent, family member or close family friend, Idaho Reports reported.

The Boise School District in response to the law asked parents and guardians for blanket permission to perform basic first aid on children, such as giving a Band-Aid, Idaho Education News reported.  

The law also gained national attention when the Washington Post reported on a 13-year-old pregnant girl from McCall who could consent to her baby’s care but not her own.

Senate sponsor of SB 1329, President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon, a Rupert Republican, in 2025 brought a bill to address some of these circumstances, but it did not advance in the House after it passed in the Senate.