Idaho Banned Vaccine Mandates. Activists Want to Make It a Model for the Country.

[Passages]

The Idaho Medical Freedom Act makes it illegal to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive “medical intervention.” Leslie Manookian, the activist behind the law, hopes to make it a “societal norm” for the rest of the country.

by Audrey Dutton
Oct. 20, 2025, 5 a.m. EDT


ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Three women become choked up as they deliver news in a video posted to social media. “We did it, everybody,” says Leslie Manookian, the woman in the middle. She is a driving force in a campaign that has chipped away at the foundations of modern public health in Idaho. The group had just gotten lawmakers to pass what she called the first true “medical freedom” bill in the nation. “It’s literally landmark,” Manookian said. “It is changing everything.”

With Manookian in the video are two of her allies, the leaders of Health Freedom Idaho. It was April 4, hours after the governor signed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act into law.

The act makes it illegal for state and local governments, private businesses, employers, schools and daycares to require anyone to take a vaccine or receive any other “medical intervention.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/idaho-vaccine-bill-medical-freedom-act-maha

A society in further decay.

[oldinmtdem92]

1. wont be stopping for a meal

i drive through that little pissant state every now and t5hen used to stop for meals. no more!!

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Aren't doctor visits "medical intervention"?

May as well ban medical treatment in the state.

Survival-of-the-fittest, just like Neanderthal Man.

[Passages]

3. Precisely.

Sciencists, researchers, medical board reviews? Who needs that?

[cbabe]

4. Dental care. Eye glasses and surgery. Hip replacements. Prenatal care. Viagra.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. They will save a ton on emergency care.

"You only need an ambulance once!"

[mwmisses4289]

5. Good. She and her ilk will die of preventable diseases, leaving the world a better place for those with

common sense, compassion, and empathy.

[Aristus]

7. No need to oversell it, Idaho; I had already resolved long ago to never visit your putrid, Nazi-haven state again.

I guess now we can add 'diseased, pestilential hell-hole' to your list of state faults.