By Ben Bartee | Source
As fastidiously documented here at Armageddon Prose, Public Health™ authorities across multiple northeastern states have placed the “anti-vaxxer” Amish community firmly in their sights over the past several years, targeting them with relentless lawfare and other forms of pressure in an effort to coerce compliance.
The Amish have thus far refused — and valiantly so.
In Pennsylvania, as we covered last month, Chester County has dispatched a portly totalitarian nurse called Dale Weiser to Amish country, tasked with proverbial door-kicking — literally going door-to-door with syringe in hand — in order to try to coerce them into submitting to measles vaccination right there on the spot.
In New York, a years-long legal fight over school vaccine mandates appears to be drawing closer to conclusion after several private Amish schools have racked up $118K in unpaid fines since 2022 for their refusal to mandate vaccines per state law, as amended in 2019 — incidentally, curiously, just in time for the COVID pandemic.
Via Reason:
“From 1966 to 2019, unvaccinated students were allowed to attend school in New York with a medical exemption issued by a physician, or if they “hold genuine and sincere religious beliefs” opposed to vaccination…
Officials amended the state’s legal code in June 2019 to remove all religious exemptions to school vaccine mandates. The legislator who introduced the bill, Jeffrey Dinowitz (D–Bronx), attributed the outbreak [of measles] to “misinformation and irresponsible rhetoric.” But instead of scaling up information campaigns, he chose to crack down on religious freedom.
In 2022, the government issued $118,000 in fines targeting three rural Amish schoolhouses—all of which are privately run, privately funded, and exclusively attended by members of the local Amish community—for failing to comply with the mandate.”
After working its way through the state and federal court system, three federal courts ruled consecutively against the Amish — first in the Western District of New York, then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, then the Second Circuit Court of Appeals again after the Supreme Court asked it to reconsider its initial ruling.