Indexing freedom

Thoughts on the 2025 Idaho legislative session

In 1887, three years before Idaho became a state, the territory’s laws were all contained in a single volume. Between 1901 and 1908, all the laws governing the state of Idaho were contained in books measuring between 2 and 4 volumes. When I started watching Idaho government 30 years ago, the state’s law books could still fit neatly on a small bookshelf. Not so today.

Photo by Clarisse Meyer on Unsplash

Despite the state having been governed almost exclusively by Republicans since 1995, the states laws now measure 27 volumes, and that doesn’t include the various regulations that go with those laws.

So when I’m asked for my opinion of the 2025 legislative session, considered by many to be truly “the most conservative in modern history,” forgive me if I don’t get too excited. Disappointingly, lawmakers did the same thing they’ve always done: demonstrated that they’re perfectly OK with the idea of using government as a means to shape society.

What government is really supposed to do — boring as it might sound — is protect rights. Not restrict rights. Not coddle the sad, bathe the dirty, or read bedtime stories to children. Just protect God-given rights. And that concept is what I’ve always wished for when it came to Idaho government. In this regard, the Legislature still failed to deliver. At best, it made Idahoans more free in some instances, which is an improvement, but still gravitated to societal control in others.

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Laws that restrict freedom rarely get repealed; government rarely shrinks. This was the point of the Idaho Freedom Index, which we launched in 2013. The idea behind the Freedom Index is that even so-called “good” legislators will, from time to time, be convinced to grow government. But “time to time” accumulates in the form of pages, and next thing you know, there are two dozen more volumes of law than there were when Idaho became a state.

When we created the Idaho Freedom Index, the idea behind it was to be different from other measurements of politicians in key ways:

1. Unlike other political scorecards, the Freedom Index was to look at every single policy bill, instead of just a small sampling of the legislation. This was intended to provide a more accurate representation of actual voting behavior. Instead of 10 or 20 bills, the Freedom Index, to this day, considers several hundred in each legislative session. There truly is nothing else quite like it anywhere in the country. If your legislator scores badly on the Freedom Index, it’s not because of one or two bills. It’s because of a pattern of behavior.

2. Scoring was to be done before votes, not after, so that there would be complete transparency about how a bill is viewed and scored relative to the Freedom Index. In this way, no one could accuse us of ignoring votes to protect a friend or choosing other votes to hurt an adversary.

3. The metrics for how bills are to be reviewed were used for every bill so the measurement of effect remained consistent.

4. Analyses are posted so that there’s no mystery as to how the score was produced, and anyone is welcome to question the scoring and appeal for reconsideration if the analyst got something wrong.

5. And most importantly, scoring wasn’t tied to a desired outcome, but rather the effect of the legislation on freedom. In other words, the Freedom Index is not supposed to be concerned with whether a bill is “good” or “bad” or whether we think legislators should vote for it or against it, but solely on the measure of freedom on a person. For example, a bill might declare certain foods, chemicals, media, or products are harmful — to the body or the soul — and should be banned. But the question for the Freedom Index isn’t whether that’s a good idea or not, but rather whether a person is more or less free if the bill were to become law.

So the Idaho Freedom Foundation reports that 2025 was a good legislative session, and I don’t dispute that it had qualities that made it better than others.

But in my view, it was still, shall we say, a shitshow. Lawmakers who should have known better seemed to have no problem whatsoever restricting freedom if it suited their view of how society should be ordered. Unfortunately, the Freedom Foundation went along for the ride, viewing legislation not through the very clinical lens of “does it restrict freedom?” but rather through the lens of “western values.” The organization did this by adding a “yeah but” test for the Freedom Index, e.g. “Yeah this bill restricts freedom, but it upholds the values of western society.”

This occurred most prominently on bills dealing with drugs, sex, and homelessness. As a result, some bills that should have been rated negatively were positive, or at worst, neutral. most notably legislation involving cannabis.

So on my own Index of personal liberty, am I more free, thanks to the Idaho lawmakers, many of whom I helped elect, directly or indirectly? Did the most conservative Legislature in the state’s history benefit freedom? Without hesitation, and with more than the slightest bit of disappointment, the answer is no.

The Freedom Index remains the best measure of lawmaking around, but it is compromised by its failure to be unflinching defender of freedom. Similarly, legislators who bill themselves as “conservative” were too often pleased as Punch to pass laws taking away freedom.

We are awash in laws. And the 2025 legislative session did nothing to fix that. If anything, it made things worse, although perhaps at a slower pace than previous sessions of he Legislature, but the trend line of government control remains intact.

One more thought for paid subscribers, below: