God entrusted you with your children. You are the expert on your children. Your children do not belong to the schools, the doctors, the state, or any governmental entity. Your children are your responsibility.

Directing the upbringing, care, education, health, and wellbeing of your children is your fundamental right. Idaho gets some of these protections right, but it violates some of them too. We have work to do!

Parental Rights Are Supreme

For more than 100 years, the Supreme Court has recognized parental rights as unalienable, and written many opinions explaining the importance of protecting parents’ ability and duty to direct their children’s upbringing.

In Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), the court affirmed that a parent’s discretion over the education of their children is not a privilege bestowed by the state, but an unalienable right. Justice McReynolds wrote this very important point, “The child is not the mere creature of the state; [his parents] who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

Nearly half a century later, in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), the court again declared that parental rights have been “established beyond debate as an enduring American tradition.”

In Troxel v. Granville (2000), Justice O’Connor, in the opinion of the Court, wrote, “the liberty interest at issue in this case — the interest of parents in the care, custody, and control of their children — is perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests recognized by this Court.” She continued by saying, “so long as a parent adequately cares for his or her children (i. e., is fit), there will normally be no reason for the State to inject itself into the private realm of the family to further question the ability of that parent to make the best decisions concerning the rearing of that parent’s children.”

There are many more cases which illustrate and reiterate these positions. 

Idaho Leads Out On Parental Rights

Idaho law also recognizes this, and describes it in the Idaho Parental Rights Act (IPRA):

The interests and role of parents in the care, custody and control of their children are both implicit in the concept of ordered liberty and deeply rooted in our nation’s history and tradition. They are also among the unalienable rights retained by the people under the ninth amendment to the constitution of the United States.

The interests of the parents include the high duty and right to nurture and direct their children’s destiny, including their upbringing and education.

The state of Idaho has independent authority to protect its parents’ fundamental right to nurture and direct their children’s destiny, upbringing and education.

In some ways, Idaho is getting it right. We have some of the least restrictive homeschool regulations in the nation — clearing government out of the way for parents exercising their right to direct their children’s education. Through the new School Choice Tax Credit, Idaho recently made homeschooling more financially attainable for many families. 

Idaho also has some of the best statutory language in the nation regarding medical decision making and informed consent. One such line from the Idaho Parental Rights Act says,

Parents who have legal custody of any minor child have the fundamental right and duty to make decisions concerning the furnishing of health care services to the minor child.

Alan Phillips, a medical freedom subject-matter expert attorney from North Carolina who has litigated cases pertaining to medical freedom and parental rights in 31 states, sees this language found in IPRA as the best he has encountered.

Idaho also boasts the strongest childhood vaccine exemption language and protection in the nation. While other states have incrementally removed legal protections regarding philosophical and religious objections, Idaho has maintained all three categories of exemptions: medical, religious, and philosophical. Not only have we retained all three, we have strengthened them. 

Freedom-loving Idaho parents exercise this right more than the parents of any other state in the nation — we have the nation’s highest school exemption rate — more than 16% and rising. We also have strong notification language. Schools and daycares are required by law to inform parents of their right to exempt their children from the vaccine reporting requirements. Additionally, Idaho has college vaccine exemptions available to all.

More Work to Do for Protecting Parental Rights

While Idaho leads the way in significant aspects of parental rights over childhood education, medical decision-making, and vaccine opt-out, there are still many avenues where we have fallen short: some vaccine mandates still exist, Idaho’s Child Protective Services (CPS) still violates families’ rights to privacy and autonomy, testing and medical interventions are imposed on children and newborns.

• End vaccine mandates. In 2026, Idaho Freedom Foundation authored House Bill 808, which would have repealed the childhood vaccine mandate altogether. This landmark legislation sought to remove the governmental mandate of medical products in a free society, which is in direct conflict with Idaho’s recognition of parents’ rights to direct their children’s care and upbringing. It is also contrary to the newly minted Idaho Medical Freedom Act (2025) which protects adults’ right to refuse medical treatments. We must be consistent in our logic. It is the right of every Idahoan to be free from mandated products. Regrettably, House Bill 808 did not advance out of committee, but IFF will attempt to introduce it again in the 2027 legislative session. If passed, Idaho would be the first state in the nation to abolish this decades-long error and violation of parental rights.

• Stop CPS overreach. There are other ways in which Idaho law is missing the mark and needs to strengthen protections for parental rights. The most glaring and concerning example is in our family court system and the subdepartment of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare known as “Child Protective Services (CPS).”
  
  As IFF’s Director of Policy Rachel Hazelip explains in her groundbreaking article, the statistics surrounding CPS child removals don’t lie. What is sold to the public as “child protection” is, beneath the surface, a system of profit for the state with almost no regard for the wellbeing of children or the protection of the family. The family courts and CPS have the ability to remove children from their parents’ care with virtually no evidence and no due process. This system of “legalized kidnapping” and “medical kidnapping” flies in the face of our statutory language detailing the fundamental rights of parents to raise their children. State and federal funds incentivizing the removal, fostering, and ultimately adoption of children away from their families is abhorrent and merits immediate attention by the people and the legislature. 

• End other medical mandates.  Another area of concern is the contradictions found in Idaho law. The Idaho Parental Rights Act is weakened by the existence of language such as this section pertaining to forced newborn testing requirements.
  
  Although exemptions to these testing requirements exist, parents are often bullied and coerced into these procedures with no mention of the exemption option. It is very common for parents to be threatened that Child Protective Services will be notified if they attempt to opt out. This is not acceptable and demonstrates a contempt for parental rights. It is not an appropriate function of the state government to force the people to do things because it is deemed “for their own good.”

Getting Parental Rights Done Right

While Idaho law strongly recognizes and protects parents’ rights in significant areas, it sidesteps them in other sections. State mandates for products and interventions on our children’s bodies do not reflect the constitutional tenets of freedom, or the values of Idahoans who respect and demand liberty. Exemptions are not the answer. It is not appropriate for these mandates to be in law in the first place. 

Finally, we are not truly respecting and upholding parents’ rights and the importance of the family when we have a system in place which can kidnap children if the state or the courts dislike the medical, education, or other rearing decisions being made by parents. And yes, “kidnap” is the right word here, especially when laws such as the Adoption and Safe Families Act (signed by President Clinton in 1997) provides financial bonuses to state agencies for each CPS taking and re-assignment of children from their parents.

Idaho Freedom Foundation has a long record of leading out in the fight for protecting parental rights. We shouldn’t have to pass laws to protect parents from government (the national and state Constitutions naturally do that), but sometimes those laws are all the agencies will listen to. Further, IFF will continue to work to repeal any and all statutes which disregard and disrespect parents’ rights to oversee the care, custody, and control of our children. Parents should never have to beg to keep rights. So, we stand with them.