New York has fined three Amish schools a total of $118,000 for enrolling unvaccinated children. According to the Second Circuit opinion, the commissioner of health fined Dygert Road School $52,000; Twin Mountain School, also known as Pleasant View, $46,000; and Shady Lane School $20,000. The schools serve Amish settlements in Clymer, Heuvelton, and near Canajoharie. New York has approximately 25,000 Amish residents, the fifth-largest Amish population of any state.
Under New York Public Health Law § 2164, children attending public, private, or parochial schools for more than 14 days must be vaccinated against specified diseases unless they qualify for a medical exemption. Each violation carries a fine of up to $2,000, and the Department of Health counts each day an unvaccinated student attends school as a separate violation.
For Dygert Road and Twin Mountain, the department assessed $2,000 per unvaccinated student, counting one day of noncompliance for each. Shady Lane provided no student records, so the department calculated its fine based on one student attending for 10 days. The commissioner described the totals as “principled and conservative under the circumstances.”
“That’s $2,000 per student per day,” said Aaron Siri, managing partner of Siri & Glimstad, which represents the Amish families. “The state of New York has now told them… you want to stay in this state, you need to abandon your religious beliefs.”
New York allowed religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements from 1966 until June 13, 2019, when the legislature repealed the exemption following the 2018–2019 measles outbreak. The repeal passed 84–61 in the Assembly and 36–26 in the Senate. The medical exemption remained in place.
The Department of Health audited the three schools in November and December 2021. In March 2022, it charged them with allowing students to attend beyond the 14-day grace period without certificates of immunization or valid medical exemptions.
After an administrative hearing, the commissioner of health upheld the charges and imposed the fines. The hearing judge had recommended against financial penalties, citing inadequate notice, but the department rejected that recommendation.
The schools do not require proof of vaccination because the parents’ religious beliefs prohibit it. According to the complaint, the families regard abortion as murder and believe vaccine development is linked to aborted fetuses. They argue that educating their children together is part of their religious formation and that the fines threaten to close their schools. In filings quoted by Amish America, parents described the schools as church-run, one-room parochial schools that accept no state aid.
“The Amish want to be able to practice their religion in peace in New York,” Siri said. “They want to continue engaging in the manner that they have lived for almost 200 years in New York. These are small one-room classrooms. Amish buildings on Amish land with Amish teachers. All paid for by the Amish.”
“Even over $100,000 is far too much to ask the Amish to pay,” Siri said. “The state of New York knows that. They are intent on having the Amish abandon their beliefs or leave New York.”
Lawyers for the families say the Amish cannot pay the fines without selling land and will move to Pennsylvania if they lose their case. Pennsylvania still allows religious exemptions from school vaccination requirements.
The families sued the state on June 2, 2023, arguing that the law violates their rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the parental rights recognized in Wisconsin v. Yoder. That 1972 Supreme Court decision allowed Amish parents to end their children’s formal schooling after eighth grade. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York dismissed the case, and the Second Circuit affirmed the dismissal in March 2025.
In December 2025, the Supreme Court vacated that ruling and sent the case back for reconsideration in light of Mahmoud v. Taylor. In that 2025 decision, the Court held that parents could opt their children out of school instruction that conflicted with their religious beliefs.
On June 30, 2026, the Second Circuit again ruled against the Amish, holding that the vaccination requirement does not regulate what children are taught and therefore does not impose the type of burden at issue in Yoder or Mahmoud. Alabama and 19 other states filed a brief supporting the Amish.
On September 28, 2026, First Liberty Institute, Siri & Glimstad, Lehotsky Keller Cohn, and attorney Chris Wiest filed a new petition for certiorari. The Supreme Court docketed the case as No. 26-438 on October 2. New York’s response is due November 2.
The petition asks whether the law violates the Free Exercise Clause as applied to the Amish and whether the Court should reconsider Employment Division v. Smith, the 1990 decision allowing neutral, generally applicable laws to burden religious practice.
The Department of Health told Fox News Digital it could not comment on pending litigation. It said the state’s school immunization requirements are based in science and protect the health of all New Yorkers.
It may appear that New York is telling the Amish they can practice their religion as long as they pay a crippling fine, but even that is not the arrangement. Paying the $118,000 would not permit unvaccinated children to keep attending school. The Department of Health counts each day each unvaccinated student attends as a separate violation.
The current fines cover only the 2021 audit, calculated at one day per student for Dygert Road and Twin Mountain and one student for 10 days for Shady Lane, according to the Second Circuit opinion. Under Public Health Law § 12, each violation carries a penalty of up to $2,000, rising to $5,000 for a repeat violation within 12 months. As long as the schools remain open and the children remain unvaccinated, the fines will continue to accumulate.
Just as with COVID, one could argue that the fact that a policy is based on science does not mean it is morally right or even logically sound when the cost-benefit ratio is considered. Locking all children in separate dungeons would reduce disease transmission to 0%, for example, but it would not be worth the suffering it would cause. From a moral and religious standpoint, it seems immoral to force people to violate their religious beliefs.
Also, since the Amish have always avoided vaccination and have never had a problem with massive deaths from communicable diseases, vaccines must not be a matter of life and death for them. Furthermore, if the state is worried about contagion, the Amish stay primarily within their own communities. Just as with COVID masks and vaccines, if people outside the community are vaccinated and believe vaccines protect them from disease, they should not care whether someone else is vaccinated, particularly someone they do not come into contact with.
Ironically, New York is shielding illegal aliens, a large community with a high rate of dependence on public benefits, whose members are, by definition, criminals through one or more of the following: illegal presence, illegal entry, illegal employment, or other criminal activity. The Amish are a small, self-sufficient community of U.S. citizens who generally do not accept state money, run their own schools, and want to be left alone. The primary difference is that the Amish are Christian, and for some reason, liberals hate Christianity.
The post New York Fines Amish Schools After Ending Religious Exemptions from Vaccination appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.