After accumulating $118,000 in penalties for permitting unvaccinated students to attend Amish schools, the plaintiffs are pursuing a legal challenge that could redefine how courts safeguard religious exercise.
New York’s Amish community has faced heavy penalties from the government for admitting students without vaccination proof. They are now appealing to the Supreme Court for intervention.
Between 1966 and 2019, unvaccinated students could attend school in New York if they possessed a medical exemption issued by a physician, or if they held “genuine and sincere” religious beliefs opposed to vaccination. But in 2018 and through 2019, a measles outbreak—the largest in nearly two decades—spread within the state’s Orthodox Jewish communities. Through effective public health measures, the outbreak was contained with zero deaths.
Shaken by these events, officials revised the state’s legal code in June 2019 to abolish all religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates. The bill’s sponsor, Jeffrey Dinowitz (D–Bronx), attributed the outbreak to “misinformation and irresponsible rhetoric.” Rather than expanding information campaigns, he opted to tighten restrictions on religious freedom.
In 2022, the government issued $118,000 in fines aimed at three rural Amish schoolhouses—all privately run, privately funded, and exclusively attended by local Amish families—for failing to comply with the mandate.
Vaccination among New York’s Amish is generally uncommon. “Stances vary,” notes Cory Anderson, a Penn State expert on Amish health—and himself Amish. “There is, however, a hesitancy toward adopting medical practices that are unfamiliar and invasive.”
A group of Amish plaintiffs responded with Miller v. McDonald. Their suit contends that the 2019 expansion of New York’s vaccine mandates violates their First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion.
Under the precedent set by Employment Division v. Smith (1990), a law can burden religious exercise only if it passes the “rational basis” test and is “neutral and generally applicable.” The Amish argue that the expanded mandate is not neutral because “the State targeted religious adherents by eliminating [the] long-standing religious exemption while keeping the medical exemption process in place.”
Federal courts disagreed. In 2024, the District Court for the Western District of New York ruled that the law “is neutral on its face, neither targeting religious belief nor singling it out for particularly harsh treatment.” In 2025, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the lower court’s ruling.
While courts have historically relied on Smith to gauge violations of the Free Exercise Clause, the Supreme Court has recently begun embracing a broader interpretation, expanding parental religious rights. The Court urged the appellate court to revisit its denial of the Amish petition, in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor. In that 2025 case, the Court held that parents have a constitutional right to opt their children out of educational programs that conflict with their religious beliefs.
First Liberty counsel Hiram Sasser, who is co-representing the Amish plaintiffs, tells Reason that this reexamination was necessary because “Mahmoud revived an older case, Wisconsin v. Yoder, which specifically involved the Amish and protecting their way of life as safeguarded by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.” In that 1972 decision, the Court held that forcing all youth to attend high school unduly restricted the Amish community’s free exercise of religion.
The Second Circuit revisited Miller in June, but concluded that Mahmoud did not apply because the vaccine requirement “does not regulate what children are taught [and] does not compel them to affirm any belief.” With the June ruling now in effect, the Amish schools are appealing once more. “Only the Supreme Court can save them now,” asserts Sasser.
New York’s vaccine mandates are unusually stringent. “Currently, forty-five states have laws permitting religious exemptions for school-age children,” Sasser notes.
There are more constructive approaches to balancing the state’s health interests. “For many communities, public health should be a resource for education rather than a rigid, top-down imposition,” says Anderson, the Amish health expert. In 2014, a measles outbreak in Ohio affected Amish groups there. Local health authorities collaborated closely with the Amish, who were surprisingly willing to cooperate—taking vaccines and isolating themselves when infected.
In praise of that 2014 success, Anderson writes in STAT that effective outreach requires understanding how religious adherents think, acknowledging their concerns, and recognizing that medical knowledge is shaped by more than mere empiricism. The New York government has not made that effort.
If the Supreme Court chooses not to hear the case, the state’s regulations will stand, and many Amish may be compelled to relocate.
CORRECTION: This piece originally misstated the timeline for the case.
