Bill Description: House Bill 290 would move elements of Idaho's vaccine mandate laws from rule to statute and allow for discrimination against exempted minors under certain circumstances. 

Rating: -1

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?

There are significant constitutional and moral objections to vaccine mandates in any context. Unfortunately, these mandates exist in Idaho law, unjustly targeting day care facilities and schools with vaccine requirements (albeit with available exemptions). The mandates are accompanied by state propaganda designed to at least encourage (if not coerce) parents to vaccinate their children. 

House Bill 290 would expand sections 39-1118 and 39-4801, Idaho Code, dealing with day care facilities and schools respectively, to include detailed lists of required vaccines. 

Currently, these lists exist in rule rather than in statute.

This bill makes several other troubling additions. One provision says that the Department of Health and Welfare "may randomly select and visit licensed daycare facilities to evaluate compliance with" the state's vaccine mandates. 

Another provision says that children whose parents have chosen not to vaccinate and have submitted a signed statement as required by law to exempt the child from these mandates "may be excluded by the department" from their day care or school "in the event of a disease outbreak."

This language codifies government enforced discrimination against the unvaccinated. Given that these exemptions are often based on religious objections, this provision is not only discriminatory but it could also constitute religious persecution.

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