A federal judge has dismissed an eight-count challenge to Idaho’s Medical Freedom Act brought by a Boise child-care provider and three parents. In a Sept. 22 memorandum decision and order, U.S. District Judge Amanda K. Brailsford granted Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s motion to dismiss and denied the plaintiffs’ request for a preliminary injunction as moot.
The ruling ends the case in federal district court but treats the claims differently. Brailsford dismissed the federal claims—counts one, three, four and seven, plus the federal portion of count eight—with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled in that court as the same claims. She dismissed the state-law claims—counts two, five and six, plus the state portion of count eight—without prejudice after declining to keep supplemental jurisdiction over them. That leaves those state theories procedurally available for a possible state-court case, while any challenge to the federal ruling would proceed through an appeal.
The plaintiffs were Le Soleil Child Care and parents Sarah Gross, Annie Roe and Julie Smith. The case docket shows they filed suit in December 2025 against Labrador, Gov. Brad Little and Department of Health and Welfare Director Juliet Charron. They argued that the act interfered with the child-care center’s ability to require vaccination against communicable diseases as a condition of enrollment.
What the law does
The Medical Freedom Act generally bars government entities, businesses and employers from requiring a “medical intervention” as a condition of receiving services, employment or access to a place. It defines that term broadly enough to include vaccinations and other medical procedures, while containing listed exceptions. The Legislature enacted the measure in 2025 after debate over how its protections would interact with school and child-care health rules.
During that debate, supporters described the bill as a safeguard for individual medical choice, while opponents warned that extending it to public and private schools and businesses could make it harder to manage communicable-disease risks. The competing arguments frame the practical stakes of the child-care lawsuit, but the court’s decision turned on legal sufficiency and jurisdiction, not on choosing a preferred public-health policy.
Labrador’s office called the dismissal a complete victory and said the law protects families from being compelled to accept medical interventions. That characterization appears in the attorney general’s statement; the decision itself is more precise about the case’s posture because it preserves the possibility of state-law litigation elsewhere.
For Idaho schools, child-care providers, employers and families, the immediate consequence is that the act remains in force. The ruling does not create a new exemption or change the statute’s text. It instead rejects this federal complaint, closes the injunction request, and draws a jurisdictional line between the claims resolved permanently in federal district court and those the plaintiffs may still ask an Idaho court to consider.
