Amish fight New York vaccine mandate for children: ‘Left with no choice’

[Stone]

Amish fight New York vaccine mandate for children: ‘Left with no choice’
New York has fined Amish private schools $118k – more than they can pay – for refusing to vaccinate children, and now the Amish are heading to the Supreme Court.



Amish people in Leola, Pennsylvania on June 30, 2017.
Shutterstock

Aug 28, 2026
(LifeSiteNews) — New York’s large Amish population is threatening a mass exodus from the state as a court battle against forced vaccines for children rages on. The Amish are now pinning their hopes on the case being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Governor Kathy Hochul has continued to insist that Amish children attending school in one-room schoolhouses — which receive no state or federal funding — must submit to her state’s tyrannical vaccine mandates or incur massive fines.

New York requires schoolchildren to receive between 24 and 27 shots, according to the New York Department of Health (DOH) vaccine schedule.

So far, three state-targeted Amish schools have racked up a total of $118,000 in civil penalties.

The attorney for the Amish explained to the New York Post that they could only pay if the state seized their land. 

Up until 2019, the Empire State allowed religious exemptions for vaccines required for schoolchildren but rescinded those exemptions after a measles outbreak in an Orthodox Jewish community.

“Have we gotten to a place where we aren’t going to make room for the Amish anymore?” plaintiff attorney Hiram Sasser asked.

“When you think of Americana — apple pie, fireworks — the Amish are on that list. They’re part of the American fabric. They’re a good litmus test of our religious liberty and our tolerance,” Sasser told the Post.

“Watch ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ It’s the one-room schoolhouse and Laura Ingalls Wilder teaching the kids. It’s a way of life that used to predominate across America, but the Amish are still holding on to it. We’ve acknowledged that as a nation and given them their space this whole time. And now that’s being tested,” Sasser said.

“Hochul previously told a church congregation that those who refuse Big Pharma’s vaccines on religious grounds ‘aren’t listening to God and what God wants,’” Tucker Carlson’s Friday news brief noted. 

“Who does she think she is?” he asked.

Conservative online commentator Liz Churchill expressed similar shock and dismay over Gov. Hochul’s heavy-handedness.

“Kathy Hochul’s New York State is fining the Amish over $100,000 DOLLARS because of their tyrannical vaccine mandate. They’re legally abusing the only people in America who don’t bother anyone,” Churchill wrote on X.

“Absolute Psychopath,” she added.

Hochul isn’t the only one condemning the Amish, who only want to be left alone from government overreach.

“The religious exemption in New York State is made up. It’s fake. Because there is no religion that objects to vaccines,” New York Sen. James Skoufis is quoted as saying in the Amish’s petition to the U.S. Supreme Court.

New York Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz likewise objected to the notion of religious exemption, claiming, “It is just utter garbage.”

“We, as a peace loving religious group, are sincerely sorry that we are causing the state a prob (sic). We are indeed grateful to the state of NY for the many privileges, freedoms, and protections they have blessed us with, for many years,” plaintiff Ezra Wengerd 55, wrote in a letter shared with reporters.

“Our Almighty God wants us to fully put our faith and trust in Him. Which is in conflict to put our trust in vaccines. We are also commanded to not be conformed to this world,” he added.