Amish schools ask Supreme Court to uphold their right to refuse vaccinations in New York

Three Amish schools in New York have petitioned the Supreme Court, asking the justices to rule that the First Amendment supersedes a state law requiring that school children be vaccinated.

Most states allow for religious exemptions from mandatory vaccinations for children to attend schools. However, four states have recently eliminated religious exemptions. One of them is New York, which did away with faith-based exemptions in 2019, according to the Amish schools’ filing.

“Today in New York, if a vaccine would harm your lungs, you may be exempted; but if it would harm your soul, you may not,” reads their petition, filed Thursday. “This makes New York an outlier. Forty-six other States (and the District of Columbia) allow religious exemptions to their school vaccine requirements.”

The challengers are three members of the Amish faith and three Amish schools in rural New York. They are represented by First Liberty Institute.

They asked in their filing that the high court decide if a state law that rejects religious exemptions but allows secular ones for medical reasons runs afoul of the First Amendment. They also asked the high court to revisit the precedent, Employment Division v. Smith. Religious liberty advocates have long wanted the high court to take another look at that decision.

It would take four justices to vote in favor of hearing the dispute for oral arguments to be granted next term, which begins in October and runs through June 2026.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided against the Amish schools, reasoning that the high court’s ruling in 1990 in Employment Division v. Smith allowed New York’s vaccine requirement.

In Smith, the justices ruled that religion does not exempt individuals from abiding by state law so long as it is generally applicable.

In that dispute, a man was fired for ingesting peyote as part of his Native American faith. He petitioned for unemployment benefits from the state, but was denied due to his firing being related to workplace misconduct regarding the drug use.

He had argued that denial violated his First Amendment rights, but the high court — in an opinion written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia — disagreed.

The Amish argue that N.Y. Public Health Law § 2164 gives children the option to be excused from vaccines for medical reasons but not for religion. A violation of the state law results in a $2,000 fine.

The Amish do not believe in vaccines, which they view as contrary to their faith.

The case is Joseph Miller, Ezra Wengerd, Jonas Smucker, Dygert Road School, Pleasant View School and Shady Lane School v. James McDonald, New York’s Commissioner of Health.