New York’s elimination of religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates is threatening to drive Amish families from the state, according to First Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser, who is urging the Supreme Court to intervene in the ongoing legal battle.
For decades, The deep blue state of New York allowed religious exemptions for schoolchildren. But the state repealed that exemption, leaving Amish families and their small private schools facing vaccination requirements and potentially crippling fines.
Kathy Hochul became governor in August 2021. The heavy fines on Amish schools came in 2022 under her administration. The state audited three small, private Amish schools and imposed $118,000 in fines ($2,000 per unvaccinated student per day of attendance) for allowing children to attend without the required shots. Those schools and families are the plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuit (Miller v. McDonald).
As governor she has kept the law in force, defended it through the courts, and shown a consistent pattern of dismissing religious objections to vaccines. In 2021, during COVID mandates, she publicly stated there were no “legitimate religious exemptions” because no organized religion had demanded one, and she told a congregation that people seeking religious objections “are not listening to God” and that their concerns are “not truth.”
The 2nd Circuit upheld the law in June, and the Amish have since asked the Supreme Court to take up the case.
"For decades, New York had a religious exemption for their vaccine mandate that they had on the books, and it protected the Amish who've been there for over 200 years," Sasser said.
"And it's just such a shame that New York is one of the only states in America that decided that they wanted to get rid of their vaccine religious exemption and to try to impose it on everybody, including private schools and, unfortunately, hitting the Amish who have their own ‘Little House on the Prairie’-style schools that they have on their farms,"
"And, for whatever reason, New York decided that they were going to start enforcing this requirement on the Amish who, frankly, just don't participate in these kinds of things. And instead of just leaving the Amish alone, New York decided to enforce it."
A handwritten letter from lead plaintiff Ezra Wengerd, 50, of Canajoharie, NY apologized to the state for causing issues, but stood firm in reiterating his community’s strong religious conviction and their refusal to comply with New York Health Department dictates:
Sasser said the state has put "crushing fines" on the Amish, which are endangering their farms and even the ability to stay in New York.
"We're representing the Amish, and I got to tell you, when they filed their declaration with the court, it was, it's handwritten because that's how they do it, and they work as a community together. … They are good citizens. They want to do their part for the state of New York, for America,"
"They want to live quiet, humble lives, be good neighbors, but New York is putting them to a religious test that we should never put the Amish to."
Sasser said the dispute is about more than vaccines and could determine whether the Amish can continue living out their faith and traditional way of life in New York.
Commentary
This episode is a clear illustration of how certain blue-state governments treat longstanding religious minorities whose practices fall outside the progressive consensus. New York spent decades accommodating the Amish’s objections, then deliberately stripped the exemption and began levying ruinous penalties on their farms and one-room schools. The practical effect is not neutral public-health enforcement but a coercive ultimatum: abandon core religious convictions or pack up and leave.
When a state uses its police power to drive out an insular, non-proselytizing community that has lived quietly on the land for centuries—while loudly proclaiming its commitment to “equity” and “inclusion”—it reveals the totalitarian impulse that appears whenever dissent collides with mandated orthodoxy.
The Amish are not demanding special privileges or political power; they are asking only to continue a pre-modern existence that harms no one else. Blue-state officials who respond by threatening economic destruction have abandoned any pretense of hospitality.
****
"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20).
