New York court forces Amish kids to vaccinate
A New York court has ruled that Amish schools must mandate vaccinations and cannot claim a religious exemption from vaccines.
In 2019, the State of New York scrapped religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates following a spike in measles cases. Three Amish community schools were immediately fined for failing to mandate vaccinations in accordance with the new law. They asked a district court to intervene, arguing that their First Amendment right to religious freedom and Fourteenth Amendment right to due process were being violated. For the last century, the US Supreme Court has understood the due process clause to include parents’ rights to direct their children’s healthcare and religious upbringing. The Amish plaintiffs explained that if schools mandate vaccinations, they will be forced to make an impossible choice: either inject their children and violate their religious beliefs, or deny their children an Amish education and violate a religious practice.
But the district court ruled in favor of the state—and on March 3rd, so did the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. The Second Circuit maintained that vaccine mandates do not violate parents’ constitutional rights because they do not come “at the expense of the Amish faith or the Amish way of life.” The judicial panel also claimed that “religious exemptions impeded the immunization law from functioning; [they] resulted in clusters of low vaccination rates and an inability to achieve herd immunity in certain communities.”
‘The Amish are an obvious control group’
The ruling drew backlash on social media. “If they can force this on the Amish, no one’s rights are safe,” wrote one user.
“Of course they did,” posted another in response to news about the judges’ ruling. “Because the Amish who don’t vaccinate and don’t have an autism problem are showing people proof of what we are not supposed to talk about. Protect the Amish at all costs.”
Another user wrote: “As a paramedic I’ve seen what these covid vaccines have done to us. As a dad, it’s been painful to watch many vaccines mandated. The powers that be know the Amish are an obvious control group. They see the elephant in the room, and they’re elephant hunting.”
The court distinguished between medical exemptions—which are tied to a specific vaccine—and religious exemptions, which apply to all shots.
“New York claims it’s about safety, but they’ll let unvaccinated kids in with a doctor’s note—just not a prayer,” said an X user.
