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


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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.