Idaho Legislature ends 2025 session

BOISE — Idaho state lawmakers wrapped up the 2025 legislative session Friday, after spending much of the day awaiting amendments to a bill that prohibits businesses and schools from requiring “medical interventions.”

The session was marked by $400 million in revenue reductions through various tax cuts, the state’s first program that will allow state funds to go to private K-12 education, new state-level immigration crimes, major changes to Medicaid, and a bumpy road for several agency budgets.

House Speaker Mike Moyle on Friday said the Legislature took Gov. Brad Little’s proposals budget — which would have allocated $100 million toward tax relief — and “made them even better.”

The final days

Legislators passed the last of the budget bills Thursday night, with the Senate leaving the floor just before 9 p.m. However, lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Friday to take up a couple more policy bills.

Senate State Affairs killed a bill that would have made Ada County Highway District commissioner a partisan position elected county-wide instead of by district. The bill only impacted ACHD.

House State Affairs also met to consider a new version of a bill that Little vetoed on March 29 over concerns it would not allow schools to send home students with highly contagious diseases.

Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, presented Senate Bill 1210, which places restrictions on businesses, and private and public schools from requiring or incentivizing any type of “medical intervention,” defined as, “a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person.”

The bill included a code reference to specify that, as current law allows, school districts may send home sick kids if they are showing symptoms or are diagnosed with a highly contagious disease.

The bill has seen a number of versions and amendments this session. After the governor vetoed SB 1023, the House and Senate promptly brought competing versions of a new version of the bill.

Senate sponsor Dan Foreman, R-Moscow, said Friday the newest version, with amendments, had been negotiated with the governor’s office.

Foreman and Tanner asked the committee to send the bill to the floor for possible amendments. The bill was the last major point of business that lawmakers intended to do before ending the session.

In what’s known as “general orders,” any representative may propose amendments.

By around 1:30 p.m., the House took up the proposed amendments, which included some proposed by the bill sponsors to ensure that private and religious schools would have the same right that public schools have to send home sick children. The amendment also included a requirement that no healthy person could be sent home during an outbreak “due to such person’s vaccination status.”

The amendment was approved, but another proposed amendment — proposed by Reps. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, and Dan Garner, R-Clifton — would have provided immunity from liability to employers if they suggested an employee take a medical intervention and that employee refused.

Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, stood and called the motion “hostile” and said it was not included in the “ironclad” agreement made with Little and his staff. The amendment failed.

The House gathered again to vote on the bill with limited debate. The amended bill passed 44-23.

The House adjourned for the year — known as Sine Die — around 3:45 p.m. Friday.

The Senate eventually met to concur with the amendment and vote to pass it a final time. The bill will be sent to the governor for signature.

The Senate adjourned at 4:40 p.m., in a motion met with applause.

The past several years lawmakers have opted to recess for five days to wait and see if the governor will veto any legislation, which gives them the option to override the veto. This year, lawmakers opted to end the session until 2026, unless the governor or enough lawmakers agree to call a special session.

Reactions

Unsurprisingly, the Republican and Democratic leadership had mostly opposing viewpoints on how the 2025 session went.

Moyle underscored the tax cuts and budget reductions as highlights of the session. Nampa Rep. Jaron Crane, who serves as majority caucus chair, highlighted his bill creating state-level illegal immigration crimes as a highlight.

Asked about the ACLU’s immediate lawsuit challenging the law, Crane responded, “I think that means we’re on target.”

Minority leaders Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, and Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, had a different perspective.

“You just heard leadership on the other side of the aisle, boast that they passed the giant permanent revenue reduction, perhaps the largest in Idaho history, while simultaneously opening the door to a voucher scheme that is likely to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars over time out of our treasury and out of the funds that we need for public schools in upcoming years,” Rubel said at a press conference Friday.

Wintrow condemned some of the disagreement leaders had on the budget-writing committee and the difficulty passing some agency budgets.

She highlighted the passage of a bill requiring insurance to cover enhanced mammograms to women who are at higher risk and a bill clarifying coroner's role in death investigations.