Amish Families in New York Lose Religious Vaccine Exemption Case
by Carolyn Hendler, JD
Published July 23, 2026
Federal & State Courts
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Yoder held that even a neutral and generally applicable compulsory education law could not override Amish parents’ religious objection to sending their children to high school. After Mahmoud, that exception applies broadly to any school policy that interferes with parental religious exercise.
The Second Circuit found the New York vaccine law to be a different kind of burden than set forth in Yoder. The court wrote that the law “does not regulate what children are taught, does not require them to affirm any belief, does not expose them to state-selected instruction contrary to their parents’ faith, and does not enlist school officials to displace parental religious formation.” The burden, the court held, “may be serious, but it is not the kind of state interference with a child’s religious development that triggered strict scrutiny in Yoder or Mahmoud.”
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New York legislatures voted to eliminate the religious exemption in 2019 after an alleged measles outbreak centered in Rockland County among the Orthodox Jewish community. New York is now one of five states that does not permit religious exemptions to school vaccine requirements. The other states are California, Connecticut, Maine and West Virginia.
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The current and past justices serving on the U.S. Supreme Court have given very little indication that they would be willing to overturn the pivotal 1905 Jacobson decision that has underpinned U.S. public health law for more than century. To have the utilitarian Jacobson decision reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in the 21st century could deal a fatal blow to medical freedom in America with repercussions that could last another 120 years.
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For as much as I admire the Amish for their commitment to their beliefs, I don’t understand their choice. But that’s my problem; not theirs. While I don’t want to live that life style, I stand firmly as a little L libertarian with them in the resistance to the Gooferment’s tyranny.
Hard to imagine that “rights” are held in such disrepute.
The principles of little L libertarianism are Life, Liberty, and Property which all flow from the natural right of self-ownership. I can’t imagine that the RIGHT to self-ownership doesn’t extend to the RIGHT to raise your children as you see fit.
While it maybe debated as to exactly WHEN the RIGHTS of the child inure — to take or have effect — the parents’ RIGHTS are paramount. (Probably, at least when they can assert them, or have their rights asserted for them by a Guardian ad Litem as in cases of physical or mental abuse.)
Clearly, the the New York vaccine law interferes with parental religious exercise and as such should be subject to the strictest scrutiny. IMHO
Argh!
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