Lawsuit claims Idaho law bans daycares from sending home sick kids. Governor says that’s not true.

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — A Boise daycare and parents are suing Idaho officials over the Idaho Medical Freedom Act, which bans vaccine mandates and requirements for medical treatment in businesses, governments and schools.

In the lawsuit, Le Soleil Child Care LLC and three parents who have or want their kids to attend the daycare, argue that the law’s vague language unconstitutionally bans a range of health protections — from innocuous things like handwashing to basic infection control measures like sending home sick kids.

The lawsuit’s claims — which Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s legal team rejects — dredge up a heated debate on the bill. In fact, Gov. Brad Little vetoed an earlier version of the bill over similar concerns in schools.

“Medical freedom is an Idaho value,” the governor wrote in his March 2025 veto letter. “However, this bill removes parents’ freedom to ensure their children stay healthy at school because it jeopardizes the ability of schools to send home sick students with highly contagious conditions including measles, lice, ringworm, pink eye, strep throat, stomach viruses, the flu, and other illnesses that disrupt families’ lives.”

Less than a week later, Little signed into law a reworked version of the bill, Senate Bill 1210, that clearly spelled out that schools can send home sick kids, and had a tweaked definition for the banned medical mandates.

Idaho governor says Medical Freedom Act allows schools, daycares to send home sick kids

So, is it really that far-fetched for a daycare to feel like it couldn’t send home sick kids?

Yes, suggests the governor’s press secretary, Joan Vargas.

In a statement provided Friday to the Idaho Capital Sun, she said Little signed the revised bill into law “because it does not jeopardize the ability of public schools or daycares to send home children sick with contagious conditions and illnesses that threaten the health of other children and disrupt families’ lives.”

But Varsek said the governor’s office “looks forward to the courts providing further clarity around this law.” She added that the governor signed into law that same year House Bill 290 to establish in state law vaccine requirements for Idaho daycares and public schools.

But the governor’s office didn’t respond to a follow up question about what language in the final so-called medical freedom bill makes clear that daycares can send home sick kids. Little did not agree to an interview.

Horseshoe Bend Republican Rep. Robert Beiswenger, the bill’s sponsor, said the governor’s comments in his veto letter were “unfounded,” arguing that even the original version did not prevent schools from sending home sick kids.

“I don’t know if he got some bad advice on our bill. But again, there’s separate code that specifically says that schools can send people home and stuff like that. It’s really just, it’s not in the bill,” Beiswenger said in an interview last week. “There’s a wide difference in saying ‘You have to take this measles shot or flu shot to come in here,’ versus, like ‘OK, you’re obviously sick. … We’re just going to ask you to go home.’”

The Idaho Statesman first reported on the lawsuit, which was filed in December. The bill’s author, Health Freedom Defense Fund President Leslie Manookian, wants Idaho’s law to become a national model for similar laws, ProPublica reported.

What is the Idaho Medical Freedom Act?

The law, approved by the Idaho Legislature and governor in 2025, bans requirements for “medical interventions,” defined as “a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person.” (That includes two uses of the term ‘medical,’ compared to zero in the definition in the bill that Little vetoed.) The law doesn’t allow mandates for those things to be used by businesses, government entities, schools and colleges to restrict entry, employment or services.

That language is so broad it sweeps up requiring staff to wash their hands, the lawsuit argues.

“It is unclear what, if any, health-related action could fall outside the scope of this definition,” the lawsuit alleges. “In particular, any ‘medical action taken’ to ‘prevent … or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person’ by its term sweeps up even the most commonplace medical actions, like excluding a sick person until no longer contagious or even requiring basic standards of hygiene like employee handwashing.”

The lawsuit is against Labrador, who urged lawmakers to override the governor’s veto, and Ada Prosecuting Attorney Jan Bennetts. In a legal filing requesting a judge dismiss the lawsuit, attorneys with the Idaho Attorney General’s Office argue that the term “medical intervention” clearly refers to something related to the practice of medicine.

“Unless an ‘intervention,’ ‘action,’ or other thing that ‘alters the health or biological function of a person’ is ‘medical’ in the sense of relating to physicians or the practice of medicine, then the statute does not regulate it,” the office’s attorneys write. “The absurd potential constructions offered by the complaint fall away: excluding a child who is apparently ill does not require a doctor, or a treatment, or injection, or anything else required by the statute, nor does it involve the practice of medicine. The same is true for excluding a sick employee until they are well.”

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to block the state from enforcing the law against private daycares.

Beiswenger said the bill doesn’t say that you can’t “ask someone (who is sick) to leave.”

“The bill just comes back and just says ‘You can’t mandate a certain medical treatment.’ It doesn’t say if you have a fever, or you’re sweating out, and having, you know, all kinds of medical issues, you couldn’t ask someone to leave, that’s not in the law at all. So they’re just kind of making things up, quite frankly,” Beiswenger said in an interview.

Attorneys for the suing daycare and the Idaho Attorney General’s Office could not be immediately reached for comment. A spokesperson for the Ada County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment, saying the office doesn’t comment on lawsuits.

Republican lawmakers worried workplaces couldn’t send home sick staff under the bill
Even on the successful version of the bill, several Republican lawmakers worried that the bill would stop businesses from sending home sick employees or customers.

In the House’s debate, Rep. Dan Garner, a Republican from Clifton, asked Beiswenger three times if workplaces would be banned from kicking out sick people.

“Can the business ask someone to leave — force someone to leave, if they feel like they are sick?” Garner asked.

“Again, the bill doesn’t address it directly. But I believe a business would be within their rights to ask someone to leave if they are sick,” Beiswenger replied.

Shelley Republican Rep. Ben Fuhriman read the bill’s language.

“I don’t care what your intentions are. A law is a law,” Fuhriman said. “And it’s written right here on page two, line 29: A business entity doing business in the state of Idaho shall not refuse to provide any service, product, admission to a venue, or transportation to a person — because that person has or has not received or used a medical intervention.”