New Idaho Laws

Idaho's 2026 Legislative Session just concluded on April 2nd, 2026

You can view all of the new bills and many that are becoming law here.

Fantastic analysis of the Idaho Legislative Session at Idaho Signal.

Below are some interesting bills that have become law.

HB494 - Background Checks - Health & Welfare - Link

This bill is brought to satisfy the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)so that Department of Health and Welfare (DHW) can continue to conduct background checks. For DHW to conduct background checks with the FBI: 1) a statute must exist as a result of legislative enactment; 2) require fingerprinting of applicants; 3) expressly or implicitly authorize the use of FBI records for screening of applicants; 4) to avoid overbreadth, identify the specific categories of licenses or employees falling within the law’s purview; 5) not be against (federal) public policy; and 6) not authorize receipt use of confidential criminal history information to a private entity.

HB504 - Bulk Lottery - Link

The Idaho Lottery requests implementation of Idaho Code modifications designed to detect and prevent bulk Lottery ticket purchases conducted by organized groups, to preserve the integrity, fairness, and lawful operation of the Idaho Lottery. These controls are intended to ensure that all lottery participants have equal and lawful access to ticket purchases, to deter exploitative or coordinated purchasing practices, and to maintain the public trust in the fairness and legality of the lottery system.

HB515 - Harassment & Bullying - Link

Schools are safer and more conducive to learning when bullying incidents are firmly addressed. This proposed legislation would ensure that families whose students are involved in a serious bullying incident are notified so they can respond accordingly.

HB518 - Human Trafficking - Link

This legislation allows law enforcement to submit their investigative findings of human trafficking to the office of the attorney general, who may, in his sole discretion, prosecute any crimes identified in the investigation. As human trafficking crimes are often highly complex and intercounty and interstate in activity, the attorney general’s office may be best able to investigate and prosecute said cases, in certain situations.

HB528 - Direct Blood Transfusion- Link

The purpose of this legislation is to ensure patients in Idaho can provide their own or a directed donor's blood for transfusions via a federally compliant blood establishment, protecting patient autonomy while allowing exceptions for safety, time, or emergencies. It shields providers from liability except in cases of gross negligence, aligns with federal law, and takes effect as an emergency measure on July 1, 2026.

HB533 - Vehicle Registration Stickers - Link

The purpose of this legislation is to remove the requirement that vehicles display a registration sticker when registration is required. It clarifies that a valid license plate and vehicle registration are sufficient for a vehicle to be lawfully operated on Idaho roadways.

HB541 - Enticing a Child - Link

The legislation aims to provide law enforcement increased latitude needed to protect Idaho youth on the internet. Predators use the internet to entice minors to perform unwholesome behaviors. The current law only specifies penalties for perpetrators who prey on children under the age of 16. This legislation extends the definition of “child” to include minors that are 16 or 17 years of age. However, this legislation builds in protection against “Romeo-Juliet” scenarios where the initiator is less than 5 years older than the victim. This is consistent with other Idaho Code. 18-1508A makes it a felony "for any person at least (5) years of age older than a minor child who is sixteen (16) or seventeen (17) years of age" to sexually batter such minor child. Similarly, statutory rape applies for 16- and 17-year-old victims only where "the perpetrator is three (3) years or more older than the victim." Idaho Code 18-6101(2). The majority of victims for this kind of crime are 13 to 17 years of age. This legislation allows law enforcement to protect more victims in that age range. This legislation not only expands the age range for victims, in so doing it provides greater protection against exploiting youth (Idaho Code 18-1507).

HB542 - Harms From Addictive Social Media - Link

This legislation requires Covered Social Media Platforms to implement, monitor, and enforce the Stop Addictive Social Media Act (SHASM), which empowers parental authority, respects First Amendment freedoms, and reduces the causes of addiction of children to social media. The goal of the bill is to require Covered Social Media platforms to obtain parental consent in order to maintain accounts for children aged 16 years old and under, and to refrain from presenting addictive interface design features to such children.

HB548 - Boating Safety Enforcement - Link

This legislation restores your Fourth Amendment rights while on the water.

HB551 - Property Tax Assessment - Link

Provides clarification and correction for calculating taxable values of fire protection districts and ambulance services districts not subject to urban renewable district revenue allocation areas.

HB561 - Flags, Governmental Entities - Link

This legislation amends Idaho Code to revise provisions regarding flags flown by government entities and to establish provisions regarding enforcement by the Attorney General. Failure of a government entity to comply will be subject to a civil penalty of $2000 per flag each day flag is displayed. The Attorney General will have the duty to enforce this penalty against a government entity. If there is a failure to comply, the Attorney General has the authority to file a civil action in District Court.

HB573 - Firearms Instructor, Enhanced License - Link

The purpose of this legislation is to amend Section 18-3302K, Idaho Code, relating to Idaho enhanced concealed carry licenses. The bill allows enhanced concealed carry training to be delivered in more adaptable instructional formats, including smaller group and one-on-one instruction, enabling instructors to tailor training to individual student needs. This legislation recognizes experienced, nationally certified firearms instructors with extensive enhanced concealed carry teaching backgrounds as individuals authorized to provide instruction on Idaho firearms law. It provides greater flexibility in the delivery of required training while maintaining Idaho’s high standards for public safety and legal compliance.

HB577 - License Plate Expiration - Link

The purpose of this legislation is to amend Idaho Code §49-443 to eliminate the requirement to replace license plates every 10 years and no longer have a required replacement period as long as the plate remains readable and legible.

HB583 - Short Term Rentals - Link

This legislation clarifies existing Idaho statute protecting the private property rights of Idaho homeowners by ensuring the right to rent their property is maintained. This legislation protects property owners by allowing local governments to regulate short-term rentals only in cases where it is in the interest of public health and safety.

HB594 - Taxation, Late Charge, Fees - Link

This legislation codifies the 2025 Supreme Court decision that proportional appropriation for fees and interest collections on delinquent property tax collections must go to each taxing district.

HB599 - Digital Content and Curriculum Fund - Link

Historically, digital curriculum funding to local public-school districts has been on a "first come, first serve" basis. This legislation provides funding for LEA's based on need.

HB602 - Idaho Courts, Foreign Laws - Link

The founders of our nation believed that the United States of America and its individual states should never be subservient to any foreign power, country or legal system and that no foreign power, country or legal system should be allowed to encroach upon our rights under the Constitution.

Foreign laws or foreign legal doctrines can be a means of imposing an agenda on the American people by circumventing US and state constitutions. These foreign laws may not recognize our constitutional rights and liberties in US courts.

The potential impact of using foreign laws and legal doctrines in US courts on the liberty of ordinary American citizens are as profound as they are despairing. The embrace of foreign legal systems, some of which are inherently hostile to our constitutional liberties, is a violation of the principles on which our nation was founded.

This legislation will establish statutory law prohibiting the intrusion of discordant foreign laws or foreign legal doctrines to protect Idaho citizens and preserve constitutional rights and American values of liberty and freedom.

HB615 - Disturbing the Peace, Churches - Link

This legislation clarifies Idaho Code 18-6409 that disturbing the peace includes persons who maliciously and willfully disturb any assemblage of people gathered for religious worship. Disturbing the Peace is classified as a misdemeanor.

HB623 - Moment of Silence - Link

This legislation requires public school classrooms provide a moment of silence for students for a minimum of sixty seconds, at or near the beginning of each school day, to reflect, meditate, pray, or engage in any other silent activity. It is the student’s choice, so long as they do not interfere with another student’s moment of silence. Public schools are prohibited from providing instruction regarding the nature of the moment of silence, other than as provided in this section.

HB628 - Parent-student Driver’s Training - Link

Currently parents in Idaho can only teach their children to drive and obtain a driver's license in rural school districts or in urban districts that do not offer a driver's training course. This legislation simply allows parents statewide to teach their children to drive.

HB629 - Vehicle Registration - Link

This legislation will allow an electronic format of a vehicle registration to be used in place of a paper card. Currently, proof of insurance can be used in an electronic format, so this will provide another option for vehicle registration.

HB637 - Gold and Silver, Legal Tender - Link

HB697 - Voting, Illegal Activity - Link

This legislation relates to elections. Repealing Section 18-2306, Idaho Code, relating to illegal voting, Interference with an election, and tampering with voting machines or vote tally systems. Making it a felony to do so. Amending Chapter 23 Title 18 Idaho Code by adding a new section 18-2306, Idaho Code, to provide for the crime of illegal voting and making it a felony; Amending Chapter 23, Title 18 by the addition of a new section 18 -2306A, Idaho Code, to provide for the crime of interference with an election; Amending Chapter 23-2306B, Idaho Code, to provide for the crime of tampering with voting machines or vote tally systems, making it a felony and declaring an emergency and providing an effective date.

HB703 - Occupational & Professional Licensing - Link

This legislation establishes a unified, Division wide disciplinary framework for all boards, commissions, committees, and programs administered by the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses. By consolidating duplicative and inconsistent disciplinary provisions currently scattered across numerous practice acts, the bill creates a single procedural section that standardizes how complaints are processed, how investigations are conducted, what due process protections apply, and how sanctions are imposed. While substantive grounds for discipline will continue to be defined in each profession’s governing statute or standards of practice, this new framework ensures consistency in enforcement processes across all licensed professions regulated by the Division.

The proposal preserves and clarifies key enforcement tools such as subpoenas, injunctions, license suspensions, administrative fines, and confidential informal resolutions while ensuring they are applied consistently. It also affirms DOPL’s jurisdiction over expired licenses, permits action against licensees who fail to cooperate with investigations, and provides mechanisms for referring serious violations for criminal prosecution. Complaint intake and file management procedures are formalized to improve transparency, accuracy, and administrative efficiency. All formal discipline will continue to proceed under the contested case provisions of the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act, ensuring due process rights are maintained.

HB715 - Library Directors - Link

Current Idaho law forces cities that run their own libraries to hire and fire the city's Library Director through a Library Commission. This legislation provides such cities with making this personnel decision directly, through the city council and library board of trustees. This adds the city council along with the library board of trustees to who can hire and fire a library director.

HB727 - Video Voyeurism, Synthetic Media - Link

The legislation strengthens protections for minors by prohibiting threats to disclose real intimate images and making the disclosure of A.I.-generated explicit images a felony when the victim is a minor. These updates directly address the growing problem of sextortion, where offenders use real or fabricated explicit images to threaten, coerce, or extort minors for money, additional images, or other exploitative demands. By criminalizing both the threat to disclose real images and the distribution of A.I.-generated images involving minors, the bill closes gaps in current law, modernizes protections against technology-facilitated abuse, and provides law enforcement clearer authority to intervene and hold perpetrators accountable.

HB730 - SNAP Integrity & Verification - Link

This legislation would require the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to enter into a data matching agreement with the Idaho State Lottery Commission to identify households with lottery winnings of $3,000 or more, refer certain cases for investigation, and disenroll ineligible households. It would also require the Department to conduct regular data crosschecks with records relating to vital health statistics, out-of-state electronic benefit transfer (EBT) transactions, incarceration status, and federal sources of earned income, supplemental security income information, beneficiary records, earnings information, and pension information. Additionally, the legislation would restrict Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility for illegal aliens in accordance with federal law and require the Department to submit information relating to cases where they are unable to verify citizenship status to the federal government. Lastly, the legislation would prohibit the state from using asset and income limits in excess of the federal standard.

H752 - Restroom, Changing Room, Opposite Sex - Link

This bill adds Section 18-4117 to Title 18, Idaho Code, making it a misdemeanor for any person to knowingly and willfully enters a rest room, changing room, locker room, or shower room in a government-owned building or place of public accommodation designated for the opposite biological sex. A second or subsequent conviction within five years is a felony punishable by up to five years in state prison. Defined as a facility where undress occurs in the presence of others, the prohibition includes exceptions for custodial/maintenance, medical/law enforcement assistance, emergencies, single-user facilities (when no same-sex option exists), temporary re-designations, athletic coaching, and accompaniment of family, guardians, or designees in need (provided the designee is not of the designated sex.

HB785 - Inappropriate Online Behavior - Link

This legislation creates a new section in Idaho Code, section 33-512E, to define what constitutes inappropriate online behavior by a student toward a public school employee or other person, and provides for corresponding disciplinary measures.

HB810 - Candidates for State Legislature - Link

This legislation clarifies the requirement that a candidate be physically present in a legislative district to qualify for the Idaho House and Senate. Candidates must be registered electors for one year prior to the general election and physically live in the declared primary residence for at least 120 days in the year prior to the candidate filing date. Exemptions are provided for active military services or a religious mission.

HB825 License Plates, Fees, America250 - Link

Currently, the Idaho Heritage Trust receives .50 cents per plate for every license plate using the standard design. This legislation removes the .50 cent fee. It creates a new America250 specialty license plate. Like other specialty license plates supporting outside organizations, a portion of the America250 specialty license plate fee will go to the Idaho Heritage Trust.

HB831 Election Day, School Instruction - Link

This legislation clarifies the following when public school buildings are used as polling places to ensure student safety: 1) No in-person student instruction in school district buildings designated as polling locations. 2) In-person instruction may occur in other school district buildings not designated as a polling place. To allow school boards to make necessary adjustments to school schedules, this bill takes effect on January 1, 2028.

HB860 - Parental Rights, Medical Decisions - Link

This legislation provides updates to the Medical Parental Rights bill that was passed in 2024. Amongst other things, this legislation makes clear that no individual acting reasonably under the circumstances shall be found in violation by furnishing nonemergency first aid services and care to a minor child appearing or represented to be sick or injured. This legislation addresses waivers and makes clear that signing a blanket consent waiver is optional. This legislation addresses the concerns of the hospitals and treating minors whose parents cannot be found but whose child has sustained serious bodily harm. This legislation clarifies that evidence can be collected that is related to an allegation of a crime against the child. This legislation also addresses the 988 number and clarifies that a 2nd follow up phone call can be made back to the child who first called the 988 Idaho crisis and suicide hotline. This legislation repeals conflicting language, including language the Attorney General’s office had suggested.

HB928 - Merit-based Health Care - Link

The Merit-Based Health Care Act amends Title 56 of Idaho Code to require that Medicaid-funded employment and contracting decisions be based solely on merit, professional qualifications, and clinical competency. It prohibits discriminatory hiring and specified DEI practices—such as race- or sex-based preferences, mandatory bias training, and ideological pledges—while preserving exemptions for federal civil rights compliance, clinical data collection, and accredited medical training. Compliance is made a material condition of Medicaid participation, enforced by the Attorney General through civil penalties, with a limited private right of action for professionals facing retaliation.

HB932 - State Gun, Advisory Question - Link

This legislation directs the Secretary of the State to place an advisory question on the 2026 general election ballot asking Idahoans to designate which gun they would like to have as the official Idaho State Gun. This is a non-binding measure and the legislature would have to take action at a future legislative session to officially designate a gun as the Idaho State Gun.

HB934 - Idaho Parental Choice Tax Credit - Link

This legislation makes technical corrections to Idaho Code Section 63-3029N. Specifically, it clarifies that an eligible student may be 5 to 18 years of age at any time during the tax year; that tutoring must be for academic instruction; that advance payments may be claimed only initially; that funds are to be paid from the state refund account; what constitutes enrollment; and that curriculum may be obtained from one or more vendors, so long as the combined curriculum encompasses academic instruction. The legislation also deletes a code provision that is no longer needed and a reference to a code section that no longer exists.

SB1227 - Artificial Intelligence, Education - Link

This legislation creates a new chapter in Title 33, Idaho Code, to address the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in Idaho's public schools. The purpose of this legislation is to help Idaho schools use emerging technologies thoughtfully – preparing students for the future while protecting privacy, preserving local control, and keeping teachers central to the learning process. AI tools are already being used in classrooms, school offices, and educational software. These tools can help personalize learning, support teachers, and better prepare students for future jobs. At the same time, they raise important questions about student privacy, data security, academic honesty, and the role of teachers in the classroom.

This bill directs the State Department of Education, with approval from the State Board of Education, to develop a statewide framework for the responsible use of AI in K-12 education. The framework will focus on safety, transparency, accessibility, and human oversight. The framework emphasizes safety, transparency, accessibility, and human oversight. The framework emphasizes safety, transparency, accessibility, and human oversight, and is intended to guide – not replace – local decision-making or mandate specific technologies.

This bill also requires local school districts and public charter schools to adopt policies on how AI may be used by students and staff. These policies must follow state and federal privacy laws and protects student data, while allowing flexibility for local needs. In addition, the bill calls for the development of AI literacy guidance, educator professional development recommendations, and parent resources to improve understanding and transparency. Limited rulemaking authority is provided to support implementation. The goal of this legislation is to help Idaho schools use technology wisely – preparing students for the future while protecting privacy, maintaining local control, and keeping teachers at the center of learning.

SB1236 - Women’s Commission, Repeal - Link

This legislation repeals Chapter 60, Title 67 of Idaho Code relating to the Idaho Women's Commission.

SS1251 - Attorney General, Duty - Link

The current provisions of Idaho Code provide that the Idaho Attorney General has common law powers as the attorney for the State. This legislation makes it clear statutorily that the Attorney General's office has the ability to pursue a declaratory action or seek injunctive relief through the courts to civilly enforce the provisions of Idaho Code.

SS1260 - Immigration, Illegal Entry - Link

This legislation provides clarity to certain provisions of the illegal entry statutes. It clarifies definitions and the application of federal immigration law and notes that the statute applies to those 18 years of age and older.

S1269 - Cloud Seeding Programs - Link

This legislation updates Idaho’s cloud seeding statutes by placing clear definitions, authorization, and reporting mechanisms into law to improve transparency and accountability. It provides for public meetings and reporting on cloud seeding operations, environmental considerations, and program effectiveness under an existing program.

S1270 - Alternative Animal Protein Labeling - Link

This legislation establishes labeling requirements for alternative animal protein products sold in Idaho to ensure consumers receive clear and accurate information about the food they purchase. It prohibits the use of traditional meat cut terminology on products not derived from harvested animals, supporting transparency, informed choice, and the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) focus on food integrity. The bill also protects the clarity of traditional agricultural products and is enforced through existing Idaho Department of Agriculture authority.

S1285 - Home School Diploma Equivalency - Link

This legislation ensures a homeschool high school diploma is legally recognized as the equivalent of a standard high school diploma or GED for the purpose of obtaining various professional and occupational licenses in Idaho. As high school graduation is a requirement for many licenses, this ensures homeschoolers stand on an equal playing field when working to earn these qualifications. Any prospective licensees would remain required to meet the same required training and testing standards.

SB1296 - Criminal Trespass, Church - Link

In light of increasing animus and threats against religious worship around the country, this legislation recognizes a specific criminal trespass offense for entering or remaining on the premises of a church or house of worship while the individual's presence is clearly not permitted. To be convicted, an individual must also be proven to possess the specific intent to intimidate, harass, or disrupt a religious service or assemblage.

SB1297 - Conversational AI Safety Act - Link

The purpose of this legislation is to establish safety standards for conversational artificial intelligence services, defined here as AI applications designed primarily to simulate human conversation. It requires operators to adopt protocols for responding to both adult and minor users. Where an operator has actual knowledge or reasonable certainty that a user is a minor, the bill mandates a persistent disclaimer of AI interaction. It also prohibits "gamification" intended to encourage excessive engagement and requires measures to preventsexually explicit content. The bill also requires an operator to provide parental supervision tools.

SB1299 - Digital ID, Limitations - Link

The purpose of this legislation is to ensure that digital identification is not required to access government services in Idaho. This legislation protects the right of Idahoans to use physical identification, prevents government from requiring access to personal electronic devices, and limits the collection and use of digital identification data. It also provides remedies when violations occur.