Vaccine Mandate After All? Amish School Parents Lose 2nd Round — Court Finds Case “Without Merit”

Amish parents in New York face a setback in the latest of a back-and-forth series of court decisions. In news released Tuesday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled against the Amish parents and schools in the long-running case over vaccine requirements in New York schools.

As a reminder, the current NY law requires vaccines not only in public schools, but in privately-operated ones as well, which is why the Amish, most of whom run their own schools, are involved here. From the Times Union report:

MANHATTAN — New York’s school vaccination requirements can remain in place, a federal appeals court ruled this week, dealing another blow to schools and families who had argued that the state’s school vaccination rules violated their religious freedom rights under the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. Court of Appeals upheld an earlier federal decision in a case filed against state Health Commissioner James McDonald on behalf of Amish parents and three Amish community schools in central New York, each fined tens of thousands of dollars for failing to comply with vaccine laws.

If you’ve been following this one, you’ll remember I called the most recent development an Amish “victory” back in December, when the Supreme Court vacated the Second Circuit’s original ruling, sending the case back for a second look at the lower court. This was in light of a separate parental-rights ruling, Mahmoud v. Taylor.

That second look is now finished. And unfortunately for the Amish families involved, the result is the same as the first time around.

A quick recap: New York allowed religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements from 1966 until 2019, when the state eliminated them following a measles outbreak.

Three upstate New York Amish schools were fined a combined $118,000 for continuing to enroll unvaccinated children. The schools and several parents sued, and eventually took the case to the Supreme Court after losing at both the district court and appeals court level.

This week, per the Times Union, the same Second Circuit panel wrote that it had “reconsidered” its decision and found the Amish schools’ arguments to be “without merit.”

It sounds like this was expected by the Amish side:

“We kind of figured that’s what would happen,” said Ezra Wengerd, an elected representative of Amish schools in New York who was a plaintiff in the case.

Wengerd, reached by phone Wednesday morning, declined to comment further.

What happens next? It would appear that the six-figure fines remain in place, as do the vaccination mandate. New York is currently one of five states which bar religious exemptions from school vaccine requirements.

Will there be another appeal? Or will these families affected end up looking for another place to live, as we’ve recently seen Amish do when they come up against local laws that impede their way of life?