Bill Description: House Bill 578 would hold employers liable for injuries or damages when it requires an employee to receive a vaccine, it denies the employee’s request for an exemption, and the employee then suffers injury or harm from the vaccine. 

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Analyst Note: House Bill 578 is one of several bills introduced this session that deals with preventing or limiting the scope of vaccine mandates in Idaho. 

Over the last two years, governments at every level have engaged in a series of coordinated activities designed to coerce individuals and businesses to comply with the preferences of central planners and self-appointed experts of all stripes. Businesses have frequently been forced into threatening to dismiss employees if they do not comply with the state's ever evolving conception of "the science." Lost in this battle have been the rights of individuals — rights of privacy, self-ownership, and self-determination. What is the remedy? To protect individual rights, legislators must act. The Legislature must ruthlessly excise all medical mandates from society, whether through governments or employers involuntarily deputized by them. Individuals must be free to determine for themselves what is proper and medically necessary. Protecting individual liberty requires recognizing the fundamental right to make one's own medical decisions free from coercion or threats of retribution.

Does it violate the spirit or the letter of either the U.S. Constitution or the Idaho Constitution? Examples include restrictions on speech, public assembly, the press, privacy, private property, or firearms. Conversely, does it restore or uphold the protections guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution or the Idaho Constitution?

House Bill 578 would create Chapter 28, Title 44, Idaho Code, to require that "any employer that requires an employee to receive an immunization as a condition of employment and that denies an employee a requested exemption from an immunization shall be liable to such employee for damages or injury arising from the required immunization."

This is a very small step toward protecting individual liberty that only applies if an employer mandates a vaccine, it denies an employee’s request for an exemption, and the employee subsequently suffers damages or injury from the vaccine. 

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