The effort is targeting measures the group says violate medical freedom, including vaccine and mask mandates.
A new coalition composed of 15 groups, including an organization founded by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is taking aim at vaccine and mask mandates across the United States.
Children’s Health Defense, the Kennedy-founded group, and other members of the Medical Freedom Act Coalition say they want every state to introduce and pass medical freedom bills.
“I think it’s the first time we’ve seen this kind of effort in the kind of freedom and health movement,” Leslie Manookian, who founded the Health Freedom Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times.
The model state is Idaho, which in 2025 enacted a law that prohibits businesses and schools from requiring customers, employees, and students receive vaccines or other medical procedures. Manookian helped write the legislation, called the Idaho Medical Freedom Act.
“Because that passed, it really showed what was possible,” Leah Wilson, executive director and co-founder of Stand for Health Freedom, and one of the leaders of the coalition, told The Epoch Times. “Our goal is to take the Medical Freedom Act to as many states as possible across the U.S.”
“Children’s Health Defense finds vaccine mandates and medical mandates reprehensible, and we are honored to be part of a coalition fighting to end forced medical procedures, to end medical mandates and vaccine mandates for all Americans,” Michael Kane, director of advocacy for Children’s Health Defense, told The Epoch Times.
The coalition also includes others linked to Kennedy or his Make America Health Again (MAHA) movement, including the Independent Medical Alliance, several of whose advisers Kennedy has appointed to a vaccine advisory committee; the MAHA Institute, whose president co-founded a political action committee that funded Kennedy’s presidential bid; and MAHA Action, whose leader has published books written by Kennedy and which has held events attended by the health secretary.
People involved in the effort say they are in communication with Kennedy on other matters, but have not discussed the coalition. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
“This state, more than any state in the country, stands for not only medical freedom but a healthy population,” Kennedy said in a briefing with Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican who signed the Idaho Medical Freedom Act a few months prior, on July 23, 2025.
Kennedy recently told reporters in Tennessee that he was not part of efforts to end school vaccine mandates in states. “I believe in freedom of choice,” he also said, describing vaccination as “a personal choice that people should make with their physicians.”
The American Academy of Pediatrics, which partners with vaccine manufacturers, and American Families for Vaccines, among other organizations, oppose rolling back vaccine mandates. The groups did not respond to requests for comment.
