Idaho bill to ban mask mandates clears Legislature by wide margin. It may soon become law
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Idaho’s public health districts covering cities and counties issued mask mandates. The rules were meant to protect people from contracting the respiratory virus, which killed more than 1.2 million Americans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Gov. Brad Little never implemented a statewide mask mandate. But Republican lawmakers have for years feared that a future governor — or cities and counties — might, and have sought to block such a rule.
On Friday, that effort in the form of House Bill 32 passed the Senate by a wide margin and and was sent to Little’s desk. Sponsored by Rep. Robert Beiswenger, R-Horseshoe Bend, the bill would block any government entity in Idaho — including cities, schools and public health districts — from mandating masks or face shields.
“COVID presented us with quite the enigma. We didn’t really know what it was or what to do, but that is no excuse to violate the rights of the citizens of the state of Idaho,” Sen. Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, said on the Senate floor Friday. “It’s my personal belief that some people’s health was affected. I’m not a doctor, so that’s just my personal opinion.”
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Beiswenger told a House committee last month that his bill aimed to counteract “overreach” during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Idaho Statesman previously reported. He sponsored the same bill in 2024, which passed out of the House but died in the Senate.
His proposal follows a series of efforts by Idaho Republicans to limit public health requirements in the state. Little, a Republican, signed a law in 2023 which prohibits most employers — public and private — from mandating vaccines as a condition of employment, the Statesman previously reported.
In 2021, then-Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, also a Republican, issued an executive order banning masks, on a day when Little was out of town and she was acting governor. The next day, Little reversed her order, calling it a “political stunt.”
On Friday, Sen. Carl Bjerke, R-Couer D’Alene, spoke in support of the bill, decrying “ridiculous” parts of mask mandates during COVID-19. He recalled hearing from people who supported waitstaff with masks in restaurants, even as seated patrons were not required to wear them.
“I go, ‘Do you know what a mask is? It’s a filter, just like your HVAC filter. When that waitress is wearing that mask, everything that she was breathing in collected on that mask,’ ” said Bjerke, who serves on the Senate’s Health and Welfare Committee. “Every time she talked to you and talked over your food, all that collected matter came on to your food.”
Mask requirements were the “federal government telling us what to do,” Bjerke said. “And nobody had the desire or the wherewithal to fight back.”
Sen. Brian Lenney, R-Nampa, said mask mandates during the pandemic “eroded” public trust in health districts in Idaho. This bill, he said, “draws the line between advisory and compulsory.”
“It’s saying that we value public health, but we value individual freedoms just as much, if not more,” he said Friday on the Senate floor. “By moving this legislation forward, we’re taking essential steps toward restoring public confidence and showing Idaho that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated in the future.”
