Court: No Vaccine Exemption For Amish Children; Amish Fined $118,000

A federal appeals court has upheld a decision requiring Amish school children to be vaccinated in New York.

These are not Amish children who attend public schools. These are Amish children attending Amish-owned and operated schools.

Religious objections do not work here, according to the Second Circuit court ruling. From Courthouse News...

A New York State law requiring Amish students to receive vaccinations does not violate those students’ constitutional rights, a Second Circuit panel ruled Monday.

The case, which the panel heard this past November, had been brought by three Amish community schools that were fined in 2019 for failing to comply with state-mandated school vaccinations.

The schools and Amish parents argued their First and 14th Amendment rights had been violated, as many Amish seek to live separately from the modern world and abhor vaccines...

New York Amish who rejected vaccination were in a good position prior to 2019. The state had previously long allowed religious objections on this matter:

New York had since 1966 allowed exemptions from mandatory school immunization for medical reasons or sincerely held religious objections. However, following a nationwide measles outbreak in 2018 and 2019, the Legislature removed those exemptions, joining four other states to prohibit any kind of nonmedical exemption.

No longer permitted this exemption, three Amish schools found themselves being heavily fined:

Shortly after the new rule was passed, the Dygert Road School, Pleasant View school, and Shady Lane school were fined tens of thousands of dollars each for violating state law after they refused to comply with the law...

New York has the fifth-largest Amish population at around 25,000 Amish people. Amish in multiple New York communities have been affected by the 2019 change in the law.