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 Andrew Cuomo rescinded religious exemptions for school vaccine mandates—making it the second state to ever do so, behind California.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 fined.
New York has the nation’s fifth largest Amish population, with an estimated 25,000 individuals. Their lawyers say if they are unsuccessful at the Supreme Court, they are leaving the state for good; possibly destined for Pennsylvania, which has the largest Amish population in the country at around 95,000.
For one, the only way the community would be able to meet the fines is if the state confiscated their land to pay them according to Aaron Siri, another attorney representing the plaintiffs.
“Watch ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ It’s the one-room schoolhouse and Laura Ingalls Wilder teaching the kids. It’s a way of life that use to predominate across America, but the Amish are still holding on to it. We’ve acknowledged that as a nation and given them their space this whole time. And now that’s being tested,” claimed Sasser.
Earlier this year, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the NYC-based 2nd Circuit—which had ruled against the Amish last year—strongly insisting the majority Democrat-appointed tribunal take another look.
However, the 2nd Circuit reissued its original decision and now the Amish will officially petition SCOTUS to hear their case again next month, their lawyers say.
Amish culture generally forbids both litigation and injectables. “The Amish really don’t want to be in this position. They don’t want to be engaging in this lawsuit in any way at all. But they’ve been left with no choice,” Siri told The Post.
In a handwritten letter shared with The Post, plaintiff Ezra Wengerd of Canajoharie, 55, an Amish father of the very conservative Old Order sect explained his community’s refusal to comply with DOH directives.
“We, as a peace loving religious group, are sincerely sorry that we are causing the state a prob [sic]. We are indeed grateful to the state of NY for the many privileges freedoms and protections they have blessed us with, for many years,” Wengerd wrote.
“Our Almighty God wants us to fully put our faith and trust in Him. Which is in conflict to put our trust in vaccines. We are also commanded to not be conformed to this world,” the letter continued.
As luck would have it, when the Amish do end up in court, they have a good track record of victories.
In Minnesota, Ohio and Pennsylvania Amish plaintiffs prevailed in state-level cases from the 1980s to 2020s involving photo IDs, buggy safety equipment and building codes—each time granted reasonable workarounds when the modern hooey of photography, reflective tape and septic tanks threatened their way of life.
But when the Amish return to SCOTUS they won’t have a slam dunk case, Wayne State University law professor Christopher Lund Told The Post.
“The claim in these cases is: you are only entitled to a religious exemption if the law isn’t neutral or generally applicable,” said Lund. “The argument the plaintiffs are making here is, if you’re going to exempt people with medical needs, you also need to exempt people with religious needs.”
The 2nd Circuit has been on a streak slapping down people who’ve challenged vaccine mandates, ruling against at least five other recent plaintiffs fired from their jobs for refusing COVID-19 jabs on religious grounds.
It’s a topic SCOTUS would rather not touch, either.
“I think the [Supreme] court’s always been hesitant about vaccination cases. And when we had church closure cases during COVID the court showed a lot of deference to medical authorities,” said Lund.
“But the state isn’t just thinking about the Amish, it’s thinking about everyone together. I think the Amish are probably a very sympathetic set of plaintiffs, but the state is thinking more widely,” he added.
An NY DOH spokeswoman said in a statement to The Post, its responsibility “is to protect public health, keep New Yorkers and their families safe and enforce the law fairly and equitably,” adding the DOH is “committed to eliminating serious illness and unnecessary deaths caused by vaccine preventable diseases” and school immunization requirements are “based in science.”
However, the community do have vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services on their side.
“President Trump’s recent Executive Order reaffirmed the Administration’s commitment to parental choice and religious freedom when it comes to childhood vaccination … Under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, HHS will continue working to protect parents’ rights to make informed health care decisions for their children in accordance with their deeply held beliefs,” a spokesperson told The Post.
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