Idaho Gov. Brad Little was right to veto so-called ‘medical freedom’ bill | Opinion

Thank goodness we have Brad Little as the governor of Idaho and not Raúl Labrador.

Little last weekend vetoed a very bad bill that passed the Legislature under the guise of “medical freedom.”

The bill, Senate Bill 1023, would have expanded on a law that prohibits businesses from requiring COVID-19 vaccines. The bill would ban businesses, schools and preschools from requiring any medical intervention, including all types of injections and actions “taken to diagnose, prevent or cure a disease,” according to previous Statesman reporting.

“Calling Senate Bill 1023 ‘medical freedom’ is a total misnomer. Idaho already boasts the most medical freedom of any state in the union, and this bill works against parental choice,” Little said in an emailed statement. “Parents deserve to send their children to school or day care knowing they will be safe from contagious illnesses that disrupt families’ lives.”

Meanwhile, Labrador, Idaho’s attorney general, issued a statement urging legislators to override Little’s veto, actually calling the measure the “defining bill of the session.”

“I urge the House and Senate to override the Governor’s veto of SB1023 and protect the rights of Idahoans,” Labrador wrote. “The Medical Freedom Act is the defining bill of this session — one that would protect Idahoans from government-imposed vaccine and mask mandates.”

Since when should the sitting attorney general tell the Legislature to override the governor? What kind of appropriate governance is that, especially since if passed, the law is likely to draw legal action?

As this board predicted, passing constitutionally suspect bills is a feature, not a bug, for Labrador’s office.

The strategy is to pass these bills that push the envelope for the very purpose of getting them challenged in the courts, hopefully all the way up to a sympathetic Supreme Court.

Instead of warning the Legislature about potential legal challenges — and consequent costs to the taxpayers — Labrador tells them, “Full steam ahead.”

Fortunately, the Idaho Senate on Thursday failed to overturn Little’s veto.

Meanwhile, Little is right to point out that Idaho already has plenty of “medical freedom.” Some would say too much.

Idaho has one of the most lax vaccine exemption laws in the country, essentially allowing anyone to claim an exemption from a childhood immunization for any reason. Consequently, Idaho has one of the highest vaccine exemption rates in the country.

Idaho has so far avoided full-on disaster, but we’re flirting with it.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare reported an outbreak of measles in Idaho in 2023, with 10 cases confirmed. That outbreak originated with an unvaccinated, nonimmune person who traveled to a country where there was an ongoing outbreak. The person was exposed there and started having symptoms after returning to Idaho. Several unvaccinated, nonimmune children were exposed to the first case in a household setting, and nine became ill with measles, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

In 2024, Kootenai County experienced 19 cases of whooping cough in the first four months of the year, compared to nine cases over the previous two years.

This all comes amid a background of a spike in measles cases across the country. Already in the first three months of 2025, there have been 483 cases of measles, compared with 285 in all of 2024, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In all, 97% of the cases this year have been in unvaccinated people.

While the bill passed the House with just over a two-thirds majority, the Senate didn’t have enough votes, 19-14, for a required two-thirds majority to overturn a veto, and historically, support for a bill tends to wane in the Legislature after a gubernatorial veto.

It’s clear that some are still grinding that COVID pandemic ax, still upset that the federal, state and local governments and businesses — gasp! — mandated masks and vaccines, and kept kids home from school, in an effort to safeguard people’s health amid an uncertain new virus, whose danger we were all trying to navigate.

“Five years ago, COVID-19 brought chaos: lockdowns, mandates, business closures, school shutdowns, and restrictions that crushed our freedoms,” Labrador wrote, adding that he thinks the health precautions were “far worse than the virus itself” — which killed more than 1 million Americans.

The Republicans who think there was overreaction to the pandemic have now overreacted themselves, with one legislator proposing a bill this session to ban mRNA vaccines and all gene therapy.

This bill, as well, goes too far by impeding public and private schools, day-care centers and any business from protecting public health from any communicable disease.

The bill also goes too far by infringing on the private sector, imposing government sanctions — and criminal penalties — on any business that is seeking to protect its staff, its customers, its very livelihood.

Gov. Little was right to veto this far-reaching government mandate.

In response, the House and the Senate have introduced new versions of the bill, according to Boise State Public Radio.

The House version lets schools manage outbreaks, but would still prohibit other government agencies and private businesses from enacting their own health precautions. The Senate version merely exempts private day-care centers from the regulations.

As of Friday, those bills were making their way quickly through both chambers.

Both bills still stink, and legislators would do well to let it go.

If not, Little should keep that veto pen handy.

This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 4:00 AM.