State lawmakers are questioning Mary Jo Beig, an attorney with the Idaho Attorney General’s office, about how Idaho’s faith-healing exemption from child protection laws works. She offered an example: Two families who have a child with a broken femur that needs to be set. Both are denying medical treatment, one on the grounds that they believe in treating the child with prayer alone; the other in favor of simply treating the injury with a cold compress. The parents claiming the religious exemption couldn’t be charged with neglect. The other parents could.

It's possible that a court could order treatment for the child, if it were notified and petitioned to do so on a doctor's recommendation, she said, but it couldn't hold the parents liable.