My Record

Idaho is growing. On an average day 180 people move into the state while 137 move out. The demographics are changing, and the economy is booming. Unemployment is low.

As a result, Idaho’s personal and corporate income taxes and sales tax collections have boomed. For years, Idaho has balanced its budget and had a budget surplus at the end of each fiscal year. That means Idaho is collecting far more in taxes than it plans to spend.

Idaho’s savings account, or the “rainy day” fund, is ready for downturns and is stocked with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded “savings”.

Idaho has been well positioned to cut taxes and relieve an excess burden of taxes on Idahoans. Income taxes were cut to a flat rate of 5.7% in 2022. In the 2023 session, Scott Herndon sponsored 2 bills to reduce property taxes. House Bill 292 passed but was vetoed by the governor. Scott urged his fellow senators to override the veto, and all 28 Republicans in the senate did so, with an override vote of 28-7. HB 292 delivered $317.4 million of property tax relief in 2023 and will continue to deliver more relief in 2024 and beyond.

In 2024, Scott has just debated in favor of and helped pass House Bill 521 which will cut personal and corporate income taxes by over $60 million a year! It reduces the Idaho income flat tax from 5.8% to 5.695%.

It seems like a minor thing, but Scott Herndon also encouraged fellow senators to sponsor and pass a cap on cigar and specialty tobacco taxes. House bill 330 passed!

Scott Herndon will continue to work to reduce tax burdens. Here is what is still possible now for Idaho:

1. – More Property Tax Help. Over the years, the owner occupied residential property tax payers have carried more of the load of property taxes versus commercial and agricultural taxpayers. This is because residential real estate has exploded in value. Scott Herndon will work to increase the homeowner’s exemption and index it to rising home values so that homeowners don’t keep paying more than their traditional share of the overall property tax burden. Scott supported House Bill 78 in 2023 to fix the problem and will continue to find a way forward.

2. – Sales Tax on Groceries. Only 13 states charge sales taxes on food, and Idaho is one of them, charging 6% on all Idahoans. That means for every $100 you buy in groceries, you pay an additional $6 in state sales tax. When you file your income tax return, you get most of that back as a tax credit, but in the meantime you were money out-of-pocket for months. In a time of high food inflation, every dollar counts, and Idaho should eliminate the sales tax on food.

The grocery sales tax is unnecessarily harmful to Idahoans in a time of massive food price inflation.

3. – Gas Taxes. Idaho’s gas tax is higher than the tax in 28 other states. At a time of historically high gas prices, you are also paying at the pump 32 cents per gallon in gas tax to the state of Idaho. The Federal government also taxes gas at the pump at 18.4 cents per gallon. Every year, Idaho collects about $360 million in gas taxes.

Cutting the gas tax would have an immediate effect on the pocketbooks of Idahoans everyday, providing tax relief and reducing the overtaxation of Idaho citizens.

4. – Idaho State Budgets. In 2023, the Idaho legislature approved over $14 billion in state spending for over 180 departments, agencies, boards and commissions. Many of those budgets grew at a rate faster than inflation and the rate of growth in the state’s population. Though Scott argued for more fiscal conservatism, and he and members of the Idaho Freedom Caucus voted against several bloated budget bills, the Idaho senate continues to be unable to limit the excessive growth of government.

For example, the Medicaid budget has ballooned from $2 billion just a few years ago to $4.6 billion this year. In 2023, Scott helped identify almost $1 billion of savings in that budget alone.

Idaho’s state universities, in the meantime, spent over $4 million just on LGBTQ Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) staff in the current year’s budget. Scott will try to trim that woke fat from being a taxpayer burden in next year’s session.

Scott will work tirelessly in 2024 and beyond to inject responsibility in how Idaho spends your tax money.

It is possible we could lower our taxes even more, but to do that, Idaho must first control its spending.

In just two years that Scott has been in the senate, he and fellow conservatives achieved a major spending victory in 2024. Idaho will now separate its budgets into line items. Some may remember that President Reagan argued for the line item veto in the 1980’s. Scott helped bring line item budgets into this year’s budget process. This will now allow the legislature to cut bloated line item spending by Idaho’s government agencies. Read about the victory here.

You pay sales taxes, income taxes and fees (like fishing licenses and hunting tags) that all end up in the bank accounts of the state of Idaho. Your legislature then spends not only that money, but also billions of dollars that come to the state from the federal government.

This year, the spending budget for Idaho is $13.9 billion. $5.6 billion of this budget is federal money, and $1.6 billion of that is financed by federal debt. We are saddling future generations of Americans with more and more debt every time we approve of Idaho’s growing state budget.

Just eight years ago, Idaho’s spending was half of what it is today – $7.0 billion.

Has the state doubled its population since then? The population growth has only grown by 15%. Inflation over these 8 years has been a total 33.1%. Combine the growth of the population and inflation, and the budget this year should be $10.7 billion. Arguably, state spending has grown $3.2 billion more than inflation and the growth of population.

Scott Herndon is a member of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee which is where all of Idaho’s state budgets get their start. Scott fights incessantly for fiscal responsibility. If we seriously controlled state level spending, we could even use the sales and income taxes you already pay to the state to pay all of your local property taxes. Scott Herndon doesn’t just rubber stamp every budget request that comes along.

Scott Herndon has a bachelor’s degree in finance from Arizona State University and has worked as an auditor and in finance and accounting. He will continue to fight to keep more of your money in your pocket. Your money is your time and liberty.

In 2023, Idaho’s governor finally decided that after 133 years of being a state, Idaho needed a shiny new $80 million annual corporate welfare program called “Idaho Launch”.

Idaho Launch extracts sales taxes and income taxes from every person in rural North Idaho and redistributes your money to massive corporations in Idaho to provde the money to train new workers that will work for those companies for “in demand careers”. Every high school graduate, regardless of merit or need is eligible for these new workforce training grants. The people who determine what are the most in demand careers is the Workforce Development Council which reports directly to the office of the governor.

Doling out $8,000 free training grants after high school is not much different than President Biden forgiving college student loans. What’s worse is that after the graduates are trained in a career, they are not even required to stay in Idaho to benefit Idaho’s economy.

This Launch program was House Bill 24, which Scott Herndon opposed. The bill squeaked by the house in a vote of 36-34. It passed the senate 20-15, but in both the house and the senate the majority of Republicans opposed the bill. Instead, it was the minority party Democrats who joined some big-government moderate Republicans to pass House bill 24, which will continue to drain $80 million from Idaho’s taxpayers every year until, fortunately, it sunsets in 2029. In 2029, it will be critical to have some capitalistic, free market conservatives in the Idaho house and senate to oppose renewal of the Launch program.

Scott Herndon also voted against Senate Bill 1211 only because it contained a $15 million taxpayer funded cash transfer to the Workforce Development Council to train semiconductor employees who will work, presumably, for Micron Corporation. It is great that Micron is located in Idaho and is a major employer, but does a company with annual sales that exceed the entire Idaho state budget really need taxpayer funded workforce training?

Next time you spend $6 in state sales tax for your $100 bag of groceries, take comfort that you are paying for someone to be trained to work for Micron. Scott Herndon opposes corporate welfare programs on the taxpayer dime. At least if we were going to invest $80 million in “education”, how about we repair some broken and decaying K-12 public school facilities?

Scott is a staunch defender of the Second Amendment and our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

A former varsity rifle team member and expert at competitive shooting in military school, Scott is a proud member of the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance and a lifetime member of the Second Amendment Foundation.

When North Idahoans were subject to a gun ban at The Festival at Sandpoint, held in a public park, Scott personally led efforts to fight for their right to carry. Unfortunately, that effort was not successful at the Idaho Supreme Court. The court decided that cities can permit special events in public parks and streets and allow the event holders to ban firearm carry at those public venues.

In response, Scott Herndon just brought to the 2024 legislature Senate Bill 1374. It has passed the House and the Senate overwhelmingly and is on the governor’s desk to sign. S1374 protects the right of Idaho’s law-abiding gun owners to carry their concealed weapons on public property.

Scott also was the lead sponsor in 2023 for an improvement to Idaho’s already good Stand Your Ground laws. When Kyle Rittenhouse was prosecuted in Wisconsin, and when Mark McCloskey was prosecuted in Missouri, the cases exposed opportunities to improve Idaho’s laws. Senate Bill 1004 was designed to ensure that lawful self-defenders get an early date in court to establish their self defense claim, at which time the burden increases on the prosecution to continue its case.

Then, if a self-defender is acquitted at trial for the reason of self-defense, SB1004 would have enabled the judge to award costs and fees to the lawful self-defender within the criminal action so that the self-defender would not be out his attorney fees and costs and would not have to pursue fees in a separate civil action.

In 2023, Scott also supported House Bill 295, the 2nd amendment financial privacy act which requires confidentiality in transaction records for the purchases of firearms, firearm components, ammunition and accessories. Specifically, credit card companies can not keep and track data about consumers and their gun and related accessory purchases in Idaho.  Those same companies will also not be able to share that data with the federal government.

Scott will continue to work to restore in Idaho the original intent of the 2^nd amendment. Your lawful right to possess and carry firearms is not just about your right to hunt or practice shooting sports. The right to keep and bear arms must be vigorously defended against those who would take away this right.

There is a gender mafia today that has targeted our children. More children than ever are confused by what the basic biological sexes of male and female are.

Permanent harm comes to these children when they are led to take puberty blockers, hormone therapies or undergo surgeries to attempt the appearance the opposite sex than their biological sex. The results are harmful and can be irreversible.

Children should not be put in the position of making decisions about the physical characteristics of their sex based on gender dysphoria, when those physical changes can harm them for life.

Therefore, Scott Herndon supported House Bill 71, which passed the Idaho legislature in 2023 and was signed by governor Little. The Vulnerable Child Protective Act prohibits puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex reassignment surgeries for children under the age of 18 when administered or performed for the purpose of changing the appearance of a child’s sex.

In 2024, Scott Herndon wrote legislation that eventually became House Bill 668. The governor has signed it into law. It prevents the use of taxpayer funding and public facilities from being used for transgender surgeries and medical drugs and procedures.

Male and female.

In 2020, Idaho was the first state to pass the so-called “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” which simply bans biological males from participating in girls’ sports. This is thoroughly common sense and is a question of fairness, because biological males have documented physical strengths over biological females, and thus it is impossible for them to compete against girls on a level playing field. Nationally, the Republican Party overwhelmingly supports banning biological males from girls’ sports.

The fairness bill, H500, passed the Idaho House with 96% of the Republicans voting for it. In the senate, 86% of the Republicans voted for the bill. In both the House and Senate, 100% of the Democrats voted against this common-sense legislation. Republicans stand against the confusion of gender dysphoria that is being pushed on our innocent children by various interests.

In 2023, Scott Herndon helped pass Senate Bill 1100 out of the Education committee and to ultimately becoming Idaho law. This School Bathroom bill was requested by our public schools which faced actual instances where boys or girls wanted to use the bathrooms or the locker rooms of the opposite biological sex. Senate Bill 1100 ensures that public schools maintain separate bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing areas, and overnight accommodations for biological boys and biological girls. It protects the dignity and privacy of students based on their biological sex.

Scott Herndon will continue to find ways to protect innocent minors in public institutions from the agenda of gender confusion being pushed on them by a confusing gender mafia in the culture.

In a huge victory in 2024, Scott Herndon helped write and pass House Bill 498. The governor signed the bill on March 20. It requires distributors of porn online to verify the age of users. It prevents those content creators and distributors of pornography from providing porn to those under age 18.

In other states, it has caused websites like Porn Hub to take their web sites down in the state, and we expect this will have a significant effect of protecting Idaho’s children from online porn.

Amazingly, there was ample evidence presented to the Idaho Senate that Idaho’s public libraries and schools these days have some very aggressive sexual materials that target children for sexual activity in a very unnatural and predatory way. These materials should not be made available to children at taxpayer funded institutions like libraries and schools. These kinds of materials are relatively new and were not in public schools and libraries in previous generations.

Scott Herndon supported House Bill 314, which passed the house and the senate with strong majorities, but the bill was vetoed by the governor. In Idaho law right now, it is a crime for anyone to give obscenity to children, with a very clear definition of what is obscene. But, there is an exception to the law for government schools and libraries. House Bill 314 would have just required libraries and schools to take reasonable precautions to keep obscene materials out of the hands of those under the age of 18.

In 2024, Scott sponsored and passed Senate Bill 1235 to reduce public library trustee elected terms from 6 years to 4 years. They will now be just like school board trustees. This will allow voters to weigh in more often if they are dissatisfied with their libraries about the protectionn of children from harmful materials.

Scott also supported adding a definition of abstinence in Idaho law to the definitions section dealing with sex education in public schools. Signed into law in House Bill 228 was the definition that abstinence is “the absence of any sexual activity prior to marriage, which activity includes physical contact between individuals involving intimate or private areas of the body that can potentially: Result in pregnancy; Transmit sexually transmitted diseases and infections; or Present emotional risks.”

The senate was presented with evidence that the definition of abstinence has been changing to include some sexual activity. Scott Herndon supports the protection of children from attempts to sexualize them while they are still children attending Idaho’s taxpayer funded public schools.

Even before Scott Herndon was elected, he was involved in protecting parental rights. For example, Scott has been a champion for parental rights in overly zealous and unwarranted CPS investigations. The state should stand strong for the role of parents in raising their own children.

In 2024, Scott authored and passed Senate Bill 1232. which will now require the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare to inform parents of their constitutional rights in a CPS investigation.

Scott supported Senate Bill 1329 in 2024 to grant parents the right to their children’s medical records and to affirm that parents should be the primary decision makers for the medical decisions for their own children. It passed and was signed into law.

Scott Herndon also sponsored House Bill 66, which passed and was signed into law by the governor. Knowingly filing false reports of child abuse or neglect is now a crime in Idaho. This is necessary because people have lied about child abuse in an attempt to weaponize the government against a parent. This has happened when parents are in a bitter divorce or custody battle, or when there are disagrements with grandparents or parents in law, or even when parents disagree with a doctor on the course of treatment for a child.

Scott sponsored Senate Bill 1005 which became law and requires Idaho’s licensed daycare facilities to fully inform parents that they may exempt their children from any vaccinations for any reason.

Scott supported Senate Bill 1029 which passed and prohibits CPS investigations based on reports of a child’s immunization status. Parental rights also may not be terminated based on a child’s immunization status.

Scott also supported the right of parents to teach their own children to drive. Strangely, House Bill 133 was vetoed by the governor.

In 2024, Scott Herndon sponsored and passed Senate Bill 1216 that strengthens Idaho’s law against illegal immigrants having Idaho drivers licenses.

Scott and the Idaho Freedom Caucus have passed House Bill 464 in the House. It awaits a hearing in the senate. This Interstate Compact for Border Security authorizes the governor to enter agreements with other states to secure our borders against illegal immigrant invasion.

Scott Herndon also co-sponsored House Bill 615 which prevents illegal immigrants from receiving taxpayer funded public welfare benefits other than emergency medical services. This is designed to discourage illegal immigrants from coming to Idaho.

Scott also co-sponsored with Idaho Freedom Caucus legislators HJM8 calling for the impeachment of President Joe Biden for his complete failure to secure the southern border against invasion. HJM8 states:

1. The United States House of Representatives should impeach President Biden for the high crime of willfully failing to enforce existing immigration law and sanctioning an invasion of the United States by millions of military-aged men;
2. Congress should prioritize laws further tightening border security and immigration before funding the war in Ukraine. The top priority of Congress should be the passage of H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023; and
3. Only after impeachment of President Biden and passage of H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023, should Congress contemplate an effective process for the safe processing of immigrants in the United States and Idaho.

Scott Herndon respects the rule of law. There has been a big push in recent years by the Idaho Dairy industry to allow illegal immigrants residing in Idaho to acquire an Idaho driver’s license. There was a bill in the 2023 session that would have issued driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Pressure from conservatives like Scott Herndon helped kill that bill.

In its place, Senate Joint Memorial 101, a petition to the US Congress, was presented on the senate floor and included a request for amnesty to immigrants that are illegally in Idaho. The memorial specifically stated:

An effective process by which persons currently present in the United States without lawful status and who are gainfully employed and their immediate family can obtain work authorization or residency status, without a pathway to United States citizenship, provided said persons have no criminal history beyond their immigration-related violations, and provided further that an appropriate fine is assessed and paid in satisfaction of their immigration-related violations;

So, as long as the illegal immigrants were working for an Idaho employer, the memorial asked Congress to grant them legal status, and their immediate family. This is unacceptable. The correct course is that the illegal immigrants should be deported from the United States, and they can then apply to return through legal means in the future. We want law abiding citizens in Idaho, which includes entering Idaho through lawful means.

Scott Herndon opposed this memorial, but it passed the senate and was not heard in the house of representatives.

Idaho has four 4-year public universities and colleges. At these taxpayer funded schools are employed over 50 staff whose mission is to aggressively recruit, promote and encourage lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer students. This pro LGBTQ effort is called Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI.

In 2023, the taxpayer funded LGBTQ recruitment staff were paid salaries and benefits in excess of $4 million. This woke outreach is outside of the core mission of Idaho’s universities and should not be funded by Idaho’s taxpayers. Here is an example of Boise State’s website promoting their LGBTQ outreach:

Senate Bill 1176 was the $678 million funding bill in 2023 for the colleges and universities that included the funding of these LGBTQ outreach staff positions. Boise State University and the University of Idaho each employ over two dozen of these types of staff members. Scott Herndon presented a substitute budget in committee that defunded these staff positions, but when the original budget arrived on the senate floor, he continued to debate against these taxpayer funded positions. Unfortunately, the liberals prevailed, and Scott will attempt another solution in the 2024 session.

In 2023 Scott Herndon supported House Bill 1 to ensure hand recounts of ballots in post-election audits.

In 2024 Scott carried on the Idaho senate floor House Bill 561 to add more thorough and consistent data to be presented by the counties to the state board of election canvassers before an election is certified. More time was also given for the post-election audits before the final certification of election results to ensure ballot counting accuracy.

It is critical that elections are free, fair and reliable. One of the ways to ensure the reliability of Idaho’s elections is to ensure that the voters are who they say they are.

You cannot get on an airplane without showing a government issued ID, and the same should be true for voters to present identity at the polls. Scott Herndon sponsored House Bill 124 in 2023 which removed the ability to use a student ID issued by a high school, college or trade school as identity at the polls.

The problem with these student ID’s is that there is no uniformity of proof of identity to obtain one. There is also no uniformity of identity presented on the ID’s themselves. House Bill 124 was passed and signed into law by the governor and eliminates the acceptance of student ID’s at the polls for voter identity verification.

Scott and his wife Arlene have homeschooled their 8 children. One of the reasons they chose to move to Idaho 20 years ago was Idaho’s strong homeschooling laws that protect the rights of parents to educate their children.

The only deficiency is that none of these great Idaho homeschooling laws are in the Idaho Constitution. In the 2024 session, Scott brought SJR105 to the Idaho legislature. SJR105 is an amendment to the Idaho Constitution to put into Idaho’s Constitution strong protections for parents who choose to homeschool without governmental interference. This constitutional change would then go to voters in November 2024 for approval and would protect homeschooling in Idaho for generations to come.

With the passage of this constitutional amendment, Idaho will become the first state to have protections for private school and homeschooling in the state constitution.

Scott Herndon supports the Idaho Constitution. On the subject of public education, the Idaho legislature is responsible for maintaining “a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools”. Our Idaho constitution states the purpose of these schools is that “the stability of a republican form of government {depends} mainly upon the intelligence of the people”.

The Idaho Republican Party recently passed a resolution and platform changes at their 2022 convention calling for more competition in public education funding. Basically, some money follows the student, not the institution. Idaho’s mix of public schools, public charter schools, private schools and homeschooling provides the competition that produces a better public educational system and offers opportunities that match the diversity of personalities of Idaho’s students. Scott is in favor of making Idaho public education as excellent as it can be so that Idaho students are among the best in the country, and Scott is a big supporter of education freedom.

Here is Scott’s record on public education in the 2023 session:

1. Education Savings Accounts or Tax Credits. Scott co-sponsored Senate Bill 1038. The bill passed in committee and would have provided $5,950 to any student in Idaho who wanted to attend private school, receive tutoring, curriculum or other forms of education that were not offered in the public schools. Money would follow the student and give opportunities to students who need options other than the public schools. Scott also co-sponsored a slimmed down version of the Education Savings Account, Senate Bill 1161, that passed the Senate.

2. Open Enrollment. Scott supported Senate Bill 1125, which passed and was signed into law and allows any student anywhere in Idaho to attend any public school in Idaho. Now, students who live in one zip code or one school district are not confined to only the public schools in their district. This creates options to succeed for every public schooled student in Idaho.

3. Teacher Spending Accounts. Every year, Idaho’s public school teachers spend hundreds of their own dollars to equip their classrooms with the materials they need to teach students. These expenses are not reimbursed by their public school districts, and the teachers are out-of-pocket. Scott Herndon sponsored a new Teacher Spending Account that would reimburse teachers for these expenses directly from the state department of education. The account is so flexible that a teacher can even go to a garage sale to buy materials and get reimbursed. The bill passed the senate but ran out of time in the house, and Scott will bring it back in the 2024 session.

4. Increase Public charter schools. Scott Herndon helped pass two bills from the Senate Education committee that became law and help public charter schools to increase. Public charter schools are wholly successful in Idaho and provide a great alternative to the traditional public schools. The bills passed, Senate Bills 1042 and 1043, make funding easier for new public charter schools. A new revolving loan fund of $50 million was started to provide some of the financing, at reasonable interest rates, for new public charter schools.

5. Increase Teacher Pay. Scott supported Senate Bill 1205 that increased teacher pay by $6,359 per year per teacher to bring Idaho’s teacher pay to a much more competitive standard.

Scott is a strong advocate for the sanctity of human. Quite simply, the intentional killing of living, preborn children should never be allowed, and there should be equal protection of all human life from womb to tomb.

The 3^rd clause of the US Constitution’s 14^th amendment pivots away from the rights of citizens and declares that no person shall be denied the right to life without due process of law. Even more clearly Article I, Section 1 of the Idaho constitution declares an inalienable and equal right to life for all.

Right after President Lincoln signed the Idaho Territory Act in 1863, abortion was prohibited by Idaho law as a felony with a 2-5 year prison sentence for 110 years from 1864-1973. While the Idaho legislature continued to include preborn children as protected generally by the state’s anti-homicide laws, it unfortunately permitted an exception for abortion after 1973’s US Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade.

As a result, from 1973 to 2022 there were over 1,500 abortions in Idaho every year. With the reversal of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in the June 2022 Dobb’s decision, abortion was again made illegal in Idaho since the legislature passed a trigger law in 2020.

After the new law was tested in a January 5, 2023 Idaho Supreme Court case, preborn children are once again protected by Idaho’s laws just like they were before Roe.

The law is not perfect though. For example, it contains an exception that allows the killing of children conceived in rape. But children should never be put to death for the crime of their father. And the God given and constitutional right to life doesn’t go away based on the circumstances of your conception.

Scott Herndon will work diligently to establish and maintain equal protection for all human beings in Idaho. It is important that we have legislators like Scott Herndon who can articulate the inestimable and precious value of all human life. The anti-homicide laws of the state of Idaho should not be denied to any disfavored minority, including preborn children.

In March, 2020 Idaho Governor Brad Little declared a state of emergency related to Covid. Late in 2021 the declared state of emergency was still in effect. The Idaho legislature passed two bills in early 2021 that would rightfully have ended the state of emergency, but after the governor vetoed those bills, 5 Republican senators joined 7 Democrats in the senate to sustain the governor’s veto. As a true conservative, Scott Herndon would have voted to end the Covid state of emergency.

The long-running state of emergency was used to funnel billions of dollars in federal debt to Idaho to enrich certain large corporations and government, and this debt will burden future generations of Americans, including our children and grandchildren. We are already paying the price in the form of massive inflation.

As Bonner County’s Republican Party Chairman, Scott Herndon was a strong advocate of the Idaho Constitutional Amendment SJR102 that voters approved in 2022. It restored a balance of power between the Idaho legislature and the governor by permitting the legislature to convene in emergency sessions without the governor calling them so that the legislature could act as a balance to the overreach of the governor’s executive branch.

On March 25, 2020 Idaho Governor Brad Little issued a Covid-19 proclamation that made it a crime to go to church or to meet with your pastor for communion. It was a crime to even gather for prayer and a bible study. Under the governor’s proclamation, all religious expression was completely banned.

Being a clear violation of the 1^st amendment, the Idaho constitution and state statutes, Scott Herndon was the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed in April 2020 against the Idaho governor (Herndon v. Little).

Within weeks of the suit (May 2020), the governor relented and lifted the ban on religion, and months later a federal judge issued a decision with a clear warning in the case to the governor not to ban the exercise of clearly enumerated constitutional rights like religious expression. The freedom of religious exercise is fundamental to the American way of life, even in pandemics.

Taking any medical product is your personal decision alone. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 “vaccine” has been weaponized to create division and mistrust among neighbors. Specifically, those who were opposed to the vaccine were ostracized by vaccine adherents. Even Idaho governor Little attempted to browbeat Idaho citizens by claiming their only way to properly “love their neighbor” is to get the jab.

In agreement with the Idaho Republican Party, Scott Herndon opposed any mandate by government to get the jab. Scott Herndon supported Senate Bill 1130 which was signed into law and does several things:

1. Businesses may not require Covid jabs as a condition of employment.

2. Businesses may not refuse service or sales to people who have not received a Coronavirus vaccine.

3. Idaho’s state and local governments may not require Coronavirus vaccination as a condition of employment, receiving a government service, getting a license or a permit, or entering a government building.

Where there is risk, which there is with these medical drugs, there must be personal choice. Some Idaho Republicans have suggested that “conservative” government has no business interfering in the business relationship between employers and their employees. But, consider the Declaration of Independence, which states in part that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

The government’s job is to secure individual liberty and to guarantee equality. In a world where many employers instituting jab mandates are goliaths in their industry, the relationship between the employer and the employee is not equal – the employer has vast power above the individual employee. Idaho’s duty is to guarantee that the individual liberty of the employee in the area of medical freedom is not trounced by the coercive force brought to bear by the significantly more powerful employer.

Finally, consider that it would not be new for Idaho to intervene in the affairs of private business. Idaho has long done that by instituting all sorts of mandates on employers that include permits, board registrations, insurance requirements and a plethora of requirements of employers in relation to their employees, particularly in the areas of discrimination in employment, ADA workplace access, workers compensation insurance, and employee safety and fair labor laws.

Scott Herndon will always champion true Health Freedom and truly informed consent.

Scott Herndon proudly took a definitive stand against foreign, particularly Chinese, encroachment on our Idaho agricultural lands. House Bill 173 was a bold affirmation of our commitment to national security and economic autonomy, ensuring Idaho’s rich agricultural heritage is preserved for future American generations. It’s a clear message that our land is not for sale to foreign powers.

The bill passed and was signed into law by Idaho’s governor and prevents foreign governments and corporations controlled by foreign governments from purchasing Idaho agricultural land, water rights, mineral rights and mining claims.