A Boise daycare and three parents went to federal court hoping to knock out one of Idaho's newest family-choice laws. They walked out with nothing. Chief U.S. District Judge Amanda K. Brailsford dismissed the case in September, leaving the Idaho Medical Freedom Act fully in force across the state and handing Attorney General Raúl Labrador's office a clean win.
The ruling means a daycare in Idaho still cannot refuse to enroll a child because of a medical choice the child's parents made, including a decision to skip a vaccine. Providers keep their right to talk about health and to share their views on vaccination with families. What they cannot do is make a shot or other medical intervention the price of admission.
What the daycare asked the court to do
The plaintiff was Le Soleil Child Care LLC, joined by three parents whose children attend the center or were expected to. They filed suit in December 2025 and named the attorney general as the defendant.
Their lawyers made three main arguments. First, they said the law was so vague that a daycare could not tell what was banned, suggesting that even handwashing or sending a feverish toddler home might count as a forbidden "medical action." Second, they argued the law interfered with parents' rights to direct the upbringing of their children. Third, they claimed families and a daycare who share public health beliefs have a First Amendment right to gather together on that basis.
The state answered that hygiene is hygiene, and that sending a sick child home is a different thing from turning away a healthy child over a parent's choice. In one filing, the attorney general's office put it bluntly, arguing there is no constitutional right to daycare at all.
How the judge ruled
Brailsford rejected every claim. On vagueness, she sided with the state's reading of the statute: a medical intervention is something medical in nature, and basic hygiene does not become medicine simply because it can prevent illness. She found the law gives an ordinary person fair notice of what it prohibits.
The three parents lost on standing. The law regulates daycares, the judge reasoned, and none of the parents showed they planned to run a daycare or impose medical requirements on anyone else.
On the association claim, Brailsford found that the tie between Le Soleil and its families is a business relationship, not a group formed for protected expression. She added that the center remains free to promote its beliefs about public health. The only thing the law blocks, she wrote in substance, is limiting the audience to vaccinated children.
She also found the law serves a legitimate state purpose: lowering barriers to childcare so parents can pick among providers without being sorted by their private medical decisions.
Where the law came from and what happens next
Gov. Brad Little signed the Medical Freedom Act in April 2025 on the final day of that year's legislative session. The version he signed followed revisions to an earlier bill, and his office said the final text protects the ability of schools and daycares to send home children who are sick with contagious illness. That point matters to every parent who has ever received a midday call from a daycare about a fever.
The law reaches well beyond childcare. It bars businesses, schools and government bodies from conditioning jobs, services or access to public buildings on a person's medical choices. Labrador's office said the ruling protects that choice for every Idaho family, and the attorney general framed the decision as a simple principle: medical decisions for children belong to their parents.
The fight may not be over. Andrea Carone, a Stoel Rives attorney representing the daycare and parents, said her clients are disappointed and are weighing an appeal to the Ninth Circuit. She also signaled the plaintiffs may push the Legislature to revisit the law, pointing to measles cases in Idaho and in a neighboring state this year.
For now, the rule in Idaho is settled at the district court level. Families choose the medical care for their children, and a daycare down the street has to take the child either way. Lawmakers who return to Boise in January will decide whether that line holds or moves.
Could the daycare go private? Keep everything the same except they can reject children or families for whatever reason they want.