NYs Amish communities, vaccinations and the battle for the greater good
New York’s Amish community has become an unlikely minority on the frontlines of a battle pitting Constitutional rights against potentially draconian public health laws.On March 3, the New York’s Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Amish people who challenged a 2019 repeal of New York state’s longstanding religious exemption for school vaccination requirements.That repeal, signed by then-Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, followed four other activist states, including California, to impose state medical dictums on religious minorities.In New York, ending religious exemptions was triggered after a 2018 measles outbreak in vaccine-hesitant ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities. Measles — with a 0.1% mortality rate and once considered a natural part of childhood, like chickenpox — had been declared eradicated in the US until that flare-up.
A few years later, the assault by New York Democrats on religious minorities continued into COVID when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio put locks around playgrounds in Hasidic areas of Brooklyn, even as restrictions were easing in other parts of the city.He also dispersed a Hasidic funeral using public shaming tactics and targeted synagogues for raids and closures due to social distancing rules.In the most recent case, Amish schools were slapped with tens of thousands in penalties in 2021 for teaching unvaccinated students — despite their isolated campuses receiving no public funding.
The Second Circuit — stacked almost entirely with Obama and Biden appointees — is no friend to religious minorities, rejecting religious freedom arguments against school vaccine mandates in similar cases in 2015 and 2021. But the government’s botched COVID-19 response has ignited fierce debate over vaccines and bodily autonomy, now amplified with Robert F.Kennedy Jr.
leading Health and Human Services.There’s significant variation in attitudes toward vaccinations across Amish communities — but they share a historical skepticism in exte...