The coward’s maneuver: How lawmakers are attacking teachers | Opinion
On Thursday, as the 2026 legislative session slumped toward a dismal and exhausted stopping point, the Idaho House set the stage for a sneaky attack on teachers launched in such a way that teachers were prevented from ever speaking out about it.
The purpose of House Bill 516 (the current version, not the original; more on that later) is union busting. It has no other. The purpose is to give teachers less power over the conditions of their employment and to transfer that power to administrators. The purpose is to weaken and shrink teachers unions in Idaho.
It would attempt to accomplish that in several ways. It would make it more complicated for teachers unions to collect dues. It would make it harder for new employees to find out about the union. And it would make it harder for teachers to do work on behalf of their union.
There are states where you could argue that teachers unions wield excess power. There have been reports of poorly performing teachers being protected. But no one has produced evidence this is a problem in Idaho, where teachers unions are not nearly so powerful. Only about half of Idaho teachers are unionized.
The problem for lawmakers is a political one: People like teachers. People like teachers a whole a lot more than they like politicians. And that means that when ideologues bring forward bills that hurt teachers, and teachers speak up against them, politicians come under pressure to drop their bad ideas. They really like their bad ideas, so they hate that.
The Idaho Education Association played a central role in negotiating advances like the Career Ladder, which helped teachers in Idaho finally get something more like competitive pay and helped stem the continuous flight of experienced teachers out of the state. It successfully made the case the voters should reject most of the disastrous Luna Laws in the early 2010s.
It would be much more convenient for these lawmakers if teachers did not have a voice — or at least less of a voice — and that is the goal of this legislation.
It was also the goal of the whole process that led up to this piece of legislation. Bills normally go through committee hearings in both the House and Senate, and that’s where the teachers union, individual educators and parents who support them could voice opposition to this bill. So far-right lawmakers devised a process that entirely avoids hearing those inconvenient voices.
They employed an infrequently used dirty trick called “radiator capping” — named for a hypothetical scenario where you take your car in for repairs, and the mechanic replaces everything but the radiator cap. They took an entirely unrelated bill that had passed through the committee process, amended it to get rid of everything that originally passed and inserted union-busting language.
That way, lawmakers don’t have the inconvenience of hearing from the teachers they intend to silence.
Perhaps it’s more accurate to describe it as “the coward’s maneuver” rather than “radiator capping.”
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.
This story was originally published April 2, 2026 at 11:36 AM.