ALBANY- They do not vote in blocs. They do not march. They do not take a dollar of state school aid. For two centuries the Old Order Amish have kept their children in one-room schools on their own farms, apart from what they call the world. New York Democrats have decided that is no longer allowed unless the children are vaccinated on the state's schedule.

The war was declared in Albany, not on a Brooklyn street corner. The pretext was a 2018–2019 measles outbreak concentrated in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in New York City and Rockland County. The weapon is Public Health Law § 2164. The current targets are three private Amish schools that the state's own case does not connect to that outbreak.

The exemption they killed

From 1966 until June 13, 2019, New York let a parent opt a child out of school shots for "genuine and sincere religious beliefs." A doctor could also exempt a child if a vaccine would be medically harmful. After the measles outbreak, the legislature repealed the religious exemption and kept the medical one. Then-Governor Andrew Cuomo signed it. Governor Kathy Hochul has left it in force.

New York is one of only a handful of states that will not recognize a religious objection to school vaccination. The schedule covers measles, polio, pertussis, varicella, and the rest of a list that runs to roughly two dozen doses. After fourteen days of attendance, a child in any public, private, or parochial school needs proof. No proof, no school.

The bill's sponsors did not pretend this was a narrow public-health tweak. State Senator James Skoufis, a Democrat and a sponsor of the repeal, told the Senate the religious exemption was "made up" and "fake," because "there is no religion that objects to vaccines. Not Islam, not Catholicism, not Judaism." Assemblyman Richard Dinowitz, a Bronx Democrat and the lead sponsor in the Assembly, called religious objections "utter garbage."

That is the war, stated in their own words. A belief is not a belief if a politician in Albany has not approved it.

The bill comes due

The Amish educate their own. The schools in this fight — Dygert Road, Pleasant View (also called Twin Mountain), and Shady Lane — sit on farms in places like Clymer, Heuvelton, and the Canajoharie settlement. They take no public money. They do not require vaccination records, because the families running them say vaccination conflicts with their faith.

The state came for them anyway. In 2022 the Department of Health brought an enforcement action. An administrative law judge recommended no penalties. Health Commissioner Mary Bassett rejected that and imposed the department's full amounts: $52,000 on Dygert Road for 26 children, $46,000 on Pleasant View for 23, and $20,000 on Shady Lane for 10. Total: $118,000. Each unvaccinated child was treated as a separate violation, at up to $2,000 a head.

Counsel for the families, Aaron Siri, has said they can pay that judgment only if the state levies on their land. First Liberty Institute attorney Hiram Sasser has been blunter in recent interviews: the fines are crushing, the farms are at risk, and if New York wins, Amish families may have to pack their wagons and leave the state.

What the lawsuit actually says

The plaintiffs are Joseph Miller, Jonas Smucker, and Ezra Wengerd, with the three schools. The case is Miller v. McDonald. They argue the repeal violates the Free Exercise Clause and the right of parents to raise their children in their faith. They lost in federal district court. They lost in the Second Circuit in March 2025. In December 2025 the Supreme Court vacated that ruling and sent it back, ordering the appeals court to reconsider in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor, the parental-rights decision. On June 30, 2026, the Second Circuit looked at Mahmoud and doubled down.

On September 29, 2026, the families asked the Supreme Court to take the case again. First Liberty, Siri & Glimstad, and other counsel filed the petition. Their argument is not subtle. Removing a 50-year religious exemption, on the basis of an outbreak clustered around New York City, has "effectively prohibited the practice of the Amish faith." The petition says there is no evidence any of those measles cases occurred in Amish communities.

They also argue the law is not the neutral, generally applied rule the state claims. Medical exemptions still exist. Teachers, aides, and bus drivers are not required to be vaccinated. And by New York's own estimates, the petition says, as many as 100,000 "noncompliant" students remain in public schools — more than four times the entire Amish population of the state, adults and children combined — while the state swings the hammer at tiny schools on private farms.

The pretext and the target

Nobody serious disputes that measles spreads in under-vaccinated pockets, or that the 2018–2019 outbreak was real. The question the Court is being asked is narrower, and harder for the state to answer. Why did a measles cluster in New York City and Rockland County become a reason to fine Amish parents in rural settlements that had nothing to do with it? Why is a doctor's note still sacred, and a religious objection "garbage"? Why does the state tolerate a large pool of unvaccinated students in the public system while threatening to take farmland from people who have refused the modern world for 200 years?

The Amish are not asking for a seat at the policy table. They are asking to be left alone, which is the thing New York Democrats appear least willing to grant. Five states took this road. Forty-five did not. The Supreme Court now has a second chance to decide whether "public health" is a blank check to drive a religious minority out of the state.

If the Court declines, the next chapter is not a debate. It is a lien on a farm, or a wagon on the road out of New York.

-J.C. Wilder - The Veil Report