Amish threaten mass exodus from New York over vaccine fight which is heading to the Supreme Court
New York’s Amish community is issuing an ultimatum to state bureaucrats: leave us alone or we’re packing up our buggies for greener pastures.The threat has been sparked by a vaccine mandate fight that the 25,000 strong religious community is taking all the way to the Supreme Court.It takes place as state Health Department officials continue to slap thousands in fines on tiny, one-room parochial Amish schools which have refused to comply with a Cuomo-era vaccine decree.“Have we gotten to a place where we aren’t going to make room for the Amish anymore?” Hiram Sasser, an attorney representing six plaintiffs in the case, Miller v.McDonald, asked.“When you think of Americana—apple pie, fireworks—the Amish are on that list.
They’re part of the American fabric.They’re a good litmus test of our religious liberty and our tolerance,” Sasser claimed to The Post.In 2019, following a measles outbreak in an Orthodox Jewish community, then-Gov.
Andrew Cuomo rescinded religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates—making it the second state to ever do so, behind California.Post-COVID, two other states, Maine and Connecticut, removed religious exemptions while West Virginia never had them.New York state law requires kids to receive between 24 and 27 jabs to attend K through 12 schools, according to the DOH vaccine schedule. Upstate Amish parents—who generally teach their children in small classes in one-room schoolhouses which receive no public money—have been in court since 2024 fighting Cuomo’s mandate.Two years earlier the state began issuing $2,000 fines for non-compliance.
Three schools listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit—Shady Lane school in Clymer, NY; Pleasant View in Heuvelton, NY and Dygert Road School near Canajoharie—together have racked up $118,000 in fines.Their attorneys tell The Post every Amish school in the state is in the same situation; the DOH refused to answer The Post’s questions about how many other schools had been ...