Bill Description: House Bill 860 would clarify and expand Idaho’s Parental Rights Act.
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House Bill 860 would amend three sections in Idaho’s Parental Rights Act to clarify and expand it. Among these changes would be to say that any civil actions brought pursuant to the act “shall be initiated within two (2) years after the harm occurred or two (2) years after the discovery, by the parent, of the facts constituting the claim, whichever is later.” This change from the current language (two years after the harm occurred) protects the right of parents to take action in cases where the harm was inflicted on a young child and not discovered for some time after the fact.
The revised language would clarify that health care providers and governmental entities must obtain informed consent from a parent before providing health care services to a minor.
New language would be added to clarify that rendering nonemergency first aid services (such as dressing minor wounds, applying topical agents, or providing fluids or ice) can be done without obtaining consent. While this may seem like common sense, some schools and daycares have claimed to need broad consent to perform a wide range of medical services in order to handle these minor issues.
On a related matter, the bill would clarify that while parents can provide blanket consent to a school, daycare, or other entity, “providing blanket consent is optional and may, instead, be given on a case-by-case basis. Blanket consent may be withdrawn by a parent at any time.”
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While the majority of changes to the Parental Rights Act would strengthen parental rights, a new subsection would also be added to say “a health care provider may authorize or furnish a health care service without obtaining the informed consent of the minor child's parent, if … a minor child utilizes the 988 Idaho crisis and suicide hotline and receives immediate crisis and suicide prevention services. If the Idaho crisis and suicide hotline determines that the minor child is experiencing suicidal ideation, it may offer and conduct a follow-up call within forty-eight (48) hours solely for the purposes of reassessing safety, reviewing the safety plan, and encouraging communication with the child's parent or guardian.”
While elements of this may be acceptable, there should be a recognized duty to seek out and inform a minor caller’s parent or guardian about the hotline call, not merely to encourage the minor to communicate with his or her parents independently.
Another exemption for the parental consent requirement would exist when a “health care provider is furnishing the health care service for the purpose of detecting or diagnosing pregnancy or providing prenatal or peripartum care, which shall not include abortion or performing or facilitating an abortion as that term is defined in section 18-8702, Idaho Code.”
There is an argument to be made that a pregnant teen has parental rights of her own toward the unborn child, but this exemption could create an avenue for sexually active teenagers (at least females) to seek medical care without parental consent if it's framed as “detecting pregnancy.”
These exceptions do not necessarily weaken parental rights relative to the current law, but they do create potential areas where the fundamental purpose of the law could be bypassed.
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The bill would repeal Section 16-2428, Idaho Code, a disturbing section of code that requires parents to obtain written permission from their teenage children in order to view the children’s complete mental health records.
The bill would repeal Section 39-3801, Idaho Code, which allows a child as young as 14 to “give consent to the furnishing of hospital, medical and surgical care related to the diagnosis or treatment of” any “infectious, contagious, or communicable disease” that “is one which is required by law, or regulation adopted pursuant to law, to be reported to the local health officer.” This law effectively allows young teens to seek testing and treatment for STDs without parental notification or consent.
The bill would amend sections 16-2424, 66-318, and 66-320 Idaho Code, which deal with both involuntary and voluntary mental health treatment, to clarify that parents must be included and informed throughout the process and to remove language allowing children age 14 and older to consent to their own commitment and release without parental involvement.
Taken together, these changes remove ambiguity and conflicting language from Idaho code, which have limited parental involvement and rights related to the medical care provided to their teenage children.
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